Revolver
by SWhite42
Summary: "I told you a long time ago that people like me don't change. You knew exactly what you were getting into and you chose it anyway. So, don't act so surprised." Her voice matched her eyes, cold and hard. Unlike Clint who was all fire. "I guess I just wanted to believe that you could be something better."
1. Chapter 1

**Hi everybody! This is my latest fic, and it's actually a story to previous one titled ****In the Land of Gods and Monsters****, though I don't think you have to read it to understand what's going on. **

**I sort of split the story by the progression of their relationship from partners to friends, and then friend to…? I don't know yet, we'll find out together, I guess. **

**Reviews and the like are super welcome and helpful and very much appreciated. **

**Thank you so much!**

"Did you get one of these too?" Natasha asked, gesturing to the postal box brimming with paperwork that had been left on her desk.

"Unfortunately, yeah." Clint told her as he leafed through the top sheets of paper in the box. "And I already talked to Coulson. We actually have to do all this shit."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Natasha sat down in her chair exasperatedly.

"I know."

"This is like eight months worth of paperwork."

"I know." Clint perched on the edge of her desk, scooting the box over a few inches with his hip. "What time are you here 'till?"

"I'm in training until 5, why?"

"Why don't you come over to my place when you're finished? I'll make a metric fuck-ton of coffee and we can get this all done." Clint tried not to sound too hopeful when he asked suggested it to her.

"Yeah, that sounds good. But, I should get going." She said, glancing up at the clock in the room. "See you tonight." She called over her shoulder as she left Clint for the training rooms. Leaving him with a small smile on his face until he got up to leave as well, he had a meeting with Fury.

So it's been five years since Natasha joined SHIELD, five years with Clint as a partner. Most of those five years had been good, well as good as things can be with Natasha. The first few years were pretty rocky, and arguments between them still came to blows more often than Clint would like, but they were largely good. Until last year when Natasha had gotten kidnapped by the very organization she'd left when she was still a teenager, The Red Room. She'd been tortured and starved within an inch of her life for month before SHIELD could get to her, but she'd lived and that was an incredible feat all by itself.

Her recovery was long and hard. Getting her body back to health and into fighting shape was frustrating for her, and agonizing as well. She'd train until her body collapsed from exhaustion and she was coughing up blood onto the training mats.

She danced a lot to help get her back in shape, strengthening and stretching her muscles and joints. The rigorous ballet regimen from her youth was still fresh in her mind as she forced herself en pointe again every time she fell until her shoes were stained red. There were times when she'd slam into the unforgiving wood floor, unable to break her fall in time and unable to pull herself up again, and, instead of being greeted by an electric shock or being dragged back onto her feet by her hair as she'd remembered, Clint would be there. He'd call her an idiot as he carried her to a chair and helped her out of her shoes, working very hard not to tear at the broken skin of her feet even more, then he'd bandage up the worst of the injuries as best he could.

That was their routine for a long time. Once Natasha had been cleared for active duty they'd been sent on a deep-cover mission for about six months to gather intel, well it was supposed to be longer than six months but Natasha got bored and the whole thing kind of collapsed on itself. But, it was weird for them, new territory. They had posed as a married couple and had more than one groundbreaking moment in their relationship.

Natasha was physically recovered but she still carried the weight of everything that had happened to her and the weight of her past was fresh in her head and she didn't deal with it quite as productively as she could have. It took her nearly dying of an overdose of antidepressants until she really began to move on and Clint had talked about his own past more openly than he ever had before.

Then they got back home, well back to New York, and Natasha was assigned to interrogate a Red Room employee the'd gotten their hands on and that had had mixed results. On one hand, Natasha was sucked back into her past and she tortured and killed a man in a terrifying and gruesome manner. On the other hand, Natasha and Clint got around to deciding that maybe, just maybe, there was something more than friendship between them. Though they hadn't yet gotten around to discussing what their relationship actually was now, they were content just to let things be. And has he walked through the winding halls to Fury's office he wondered just how long things would and could stay this calm between them.

"Agent Barton, take a seat." Fury didn't even look up as Clint entered the room until he was took a seat.

"You wanted to see me, sir." It was sort of a half-question, half-statement. Fury rarely wanted to see either of them these days.

"You are aware of Romanoff's interrogation, aren't you?" That definitely wasn't actually a question. That was the tone of voice Fury always used when Clint had broken one or more rules and he was just kind of tired of dealing with it. Not unlike a hopeless parent with a rebellious kid, no surprise, just disappointment.

"Yes, I am."

"And you are aware that that particular activity was highly classified?" _Oh boy, _Clint thought as he settled in for a long and unpleasant conversation with his boss.

"Yes, I am."

"And you found out about this interrogation from Coulson?"

"Not really, I kinda just guessed."

"Oh, you guessed?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"So when you _guessed _where Agent Romanoff was you decided the best course of action was to break into the most secure wing of the SHIELD base?"

"Naturally, yeah." Fury looked like he was about to explode, Clint had that effect on him.

"And you did this using an access card that you stole from your handler?"

"Well, I wouldn't really call it stealing. It was more like borrowing."

"Borrowing implies the intention of giving it back." Fury pointed out.

"It was going to get back to him someday." Clint shot back with a shrug.

"I swear, you two are going to be the death of me. Neither of you can take orders and neither of you can follow a goddamn rule to save your life. I'm of a mind to suspend the both of you from active missions until you can learn to follow basic orders." Clint didn't really expect this to go well, but suspension seemed a little harsh for what he'd done. Especially considering nothing changed.

"However," Fury continued. "You may be able to redeem yourself Agent Barton." Okay, Clint really didn't like the sound of that.

"How?" The apprehension was clear in his voice.

"Tell me about Agent Romanoff."

"What?"

"I know she hasn't told any of us the truth about her. I'm betting you're the closest thing she has to a friend and you'd know more about her than anyone. I want to know who I took on five years ago and who I risked my job for."

"Well, she's a Leo and a vegetarian. And after that interrogation I'm beginning to understand why she doesn't eat meat. Uhh...she prefers cats to dogs. And, oh! She's big into cocktails. And she only drinks beer if it's craft beer. Though she owns like a $400 bottle of wine."

"Barton, I'm being serious." Clint could hear the warning in his voice but steadfastly ignored it, he was having too much fun with this.

"She drinks her coffee black. And she only sleeps on her left side. Let's see...what else? She can play the piano, and the cello as well as being trained in classical ballet. She can make a mean mojito, if you're interested."

"You are hear by suspended from active duty missions until further notice, Barton. You are reassigned to Archives until further notice." Fury sat back in his chair with that smug look on his face that always made Clint want to punch him.

"There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know, Fury. Honestly, she's not as difficult as you make her out to be."

"What do you know about her past?"

"Honestly, not that much. She's told me a few things, but always in the vaguest of details and without names. We don't really talk about it, and it doesn't come up as often as you'd think. Plus the last time I pressed the issue she nearly stabbed me."

"Do we have any reason to doubt her loyalties?" Okay, so _that's _the reason that Fury wanted to talk to him.

"I trust Natasha completely." He told him with the same dead-seriousness that Fury always had with him, and it was the God's-honest truth.

"You're excused, Barton." Fury dismissed him brusquely, still seeming dissatisfied with the answer he was given, but he also knew that was all he was going to get.

"Am I still suspended?" Clint asked as he got up to leave.

"I'll think about it. Now, get out of my office. Coulson tells me you have some paperwork to do." Fury smirked as Clint rolled his eyes in frustration, leaving the office in a bit of a huff about the whole thing. He understood why Fury had new reservations about Natasha. After all that Russia business she could easily have turned her cloak again for the Russians, but he still didn't enjoy being used as an informant of Natasha. Even if it was for security purposes. He shrugged, putting the whole thing out of his mind as he lugged both boxes out to his car and made his way home.

Meanwhile, Natasha was being used for a new recruit training demonstration. Coulson had her pitted against several of the bigger SHIELD agents and the recruits watched as, one by one, the men crumbled beneath her. They all knew what Natasha was capable of going into this, maybe that was part of the reason they'd agreed to it, but their planet-sized male egos still left them upset with Natasha's victories.

"Agent Romanoff, care to describe to our recruits your fighting style?" Coulson prompted once the mat had been cleared of her last victim.

"It's all physics really. Fighting most of the time isn't about brute strength because it's slow and wastes energy. Instead, it's more about leverage. Angles, velocity, gravity, and all that mixed with an innate knowledge of the human body and it's weakness all combine to create a more streamlined, energy-efficient mean of fighting." She explained casually as pulled the tape off her hands.

"How on earth do you do that flying-scissor-head thing?" Asked one of the males of the group who looked very confused by the whole thing.

"It's actually a relatively simple take-down move once you master it. It's taken years of practice though to cultivate and master this more unique fighting style. Am I good for today, Coulson?"

"Yes. Thank you for the demonstration, you're free to go." Coulson was surprised that Natasha had been so easygoing about this whole thing. Normally he fought her tooth and nail over everything, but not recently. Something about her had changed, but he couldn't quite place what it was.

Natasha liked the new recruits. Well, she didn't hate them and she preferred them to a lot of the older agents. In the five years that she'd been here, most of the field agents that had been working here when she had been brought in had died or been reassigned. Few people who really knew about how she ended up at SHIELD remained, as a result, she'd kind of become a legend around here and most recruits were too afraid to talk to her, which suited her just fine. She was admired and idolized and feared and it felt kind of good.

She didn't bother to shower or change, simply pulling a mildly ratty t-shirt on over her sports bra and lacing up a pair of running shoes. She grabbed her keys out of the baby pocket of her running and tossed them in her purse with her wallet and phone before pulling her hair out of it's messy ponytail as she left the building.

She stopped and grabbed some chinese takeout from Clint's local joint on her way to his apartment, only realizing how hungry she was when finally alone in her car. Natasha had only been to Clint's apartment a handful of times, he mostly came over to hers, but she let herself in and made her way up to the sixth floor where Natasha would silently curse the fact that he lived in a nicer place than she did and here people actually, you know, spoke to each other in the hallways.

"Hi, how are you?" Natasha's head snapped up at the too peppy greeting. She found herself face to face with a short but slender woman in scrubs. Her skin was tanned, but it was more like she spent a lot of time outdoors than having a naturally tan complexion and it seemed to clash a little with her dark honey-colored hair and her dark brown, almost black eyes. She had a round face with a sort of squished face, like her features were just _slightly_ too small for the rest of her face, but it wan't really unattractive either. It was her smile that made Natasha look on with apprehension. Or maybe it was the vaguely plasticine vibe she gave off standing there with a barbie sized smile on her face for a complete stranger.

"Uhh, fine. How about you?" Natasha hated this pointless smalltalk that society basically required of people.

"I'm excellent. And, I'm sorry, but I don't recognize you. Are you new here?" Natasha hated weirdly personal questions even more than the smalltalk.

"No, I'm just visiting a friend." She replied without enthusiasm, tying to maneuver out of this conversation.

"Oh, really? Who?" Okay, now this was too close for comfort.

"You know, I'm actually running late so I should really be going." She shifted the brown paper bag from one arm to the other as she walked around this woman, feeling grateful when Clint's door opened and his blonde head poked curiously out the door.

"I thought that was you." He said, opening his door wider and Natasha let the relief show on her face.

"I brought food." She held up the bag and let him usher her inside, not even glancing at the other woman in the hall as he closed the door behind them.

"Okay, is is just me or was that chick kinda creepy?" Natasha asked, setting the bag down on the counter and pulling out the little square containers.

"Beth? Yeah, she's not quite right. But, I don't really socialize with these people too much. They all ask too many questions." He shrugged, picking up a pair of chopsticks and breaking the wooden connector before opening up a container of white rice.

They ate quickly, talking about nothing of importance until they both decided it was time to face the music and begin cracking down on that paperwork. Clint poured two mugs full of hot coffee and they began to work in earnest with Clint sprawled on the couch while Natasha was cross-legged on the floor ben over his coffee table. Nothing but the shuffling of papers and the scratching of pens were heard except for the occasional coffee refill, but after about 4 hours Clint stopped refilling his cup altogether and just drank straight out of the pot. When they were finished it was about four in the morning.

"Victory is ours!" Clint exclaimed, throwing his hands up when he had signed the bottom of the last sheet of paper. By now both their handwriting looked more or less like drunken chicken scratch but neither of them could even be bothered to care as they were finally able to relax.

"You're such a dork." Natasha teased, flicking her pen at him.

"Don't bring me down, Tasha. I feel good about this."

"It's four in the fucking morning, how can you possibly feel good about this?"

"We're done. It's exciting."

"Whatever makes you happy, but I should really get going."

"Or you could stay." He suggested, reaching forward and tugged her up and over his coffee table onto the couch next to him, not caring that Natasha had to step on it in the process.

"I'm exhausted, Clint. I just want to sleep."

"Nat, I don't know if you know this, but I actually have a bed here." She gave him a playful hit in the chest.

"I'm in sweaty gross workout clothes that I'd rather not sleep in." Clint only shrugged at her excuse.

"You can wear something of mine." He countered again and Natasha sighed. "C'mon, I'll even make you breakfast in the morning."

"Only if you make pancakes."

"Deal."

Natasha got up and rummaged through her purse until she pulled out a toothbrush, shrugging when Clint raised an eyebrow at her.

"I like clean teeth." She explained as she went off to go brush her teeth and wash her face. When she came out of the bathroom Clint handed her a plain grey t-shirt. He didn't even bother to look away from her as she lazily undressed until she was in nothing but her panties before pulling the shirt on over her head. Clint had changed too so now he wore only a pair or navy sweatpants; he liked to sleep shirtless.

Natasha settled into bed, curling up on her side with her left arm under her head, staring blankly at the wall while Clint stretch out on his back, shutting the light off a few moments later. The rhythmic sound of their breathing was the only sound in the room until Natasha, in her own restlessness, spoke up.

"Hey, give me your hand." She said, as she turned her head to look back at Clint and held up her right hand, her body still turned away from him. He looked over at her and placed his left hand palm-down in hers.

"Your other hand." She clarified and he switched hands. Clint felt a slight tug on his arm, rolling onto his side as Natasha wrapped his hand over her waist, letting it come to rest flat against her stomach with her hand placed gently over the top of his. In response he reached just a little bit further, slipping his hand underneath her waist, and pulled her flush against his chest.

Natasha, with some measure of will, let herself relax. Let herself be encompassed by her partner, let her head fall back against her shoulder, let his hand slip under her shirt to rest against her skin, let their legs intertwine beneath the blanket together.

It's not like this was her first time sharing a bed with someone. In fact, it was really more like the opposite. But, this was something new for her, for him too.

She'd played the call girl, the prostitute, the blushing schoolgirl, the trophy girlfriend, the fianceé, even the wife. She'd played the obedient recruit too, but never herself, never Natasha. She spent so long burying herself under layers and layers of things that just weren't her to survive that she'd forgotten what having relationships simply for the sake of connecting with another human being for no other reason than desire, felt like. Maybe she never knew before.

But there was Clint. She didn't really quite understand him, she couldn't quite read him as well as she could read other people, and she didn't quite trust him. To clarify, in a mission, in a firefight, she wouldn't choose anybody else, but with her own past, with her own secrets, she'd rather keep that to herself. Though that's more of a reflection of her than of him.

He was different, to put it simply. With any other person, in her experience, male or female, this situation would have some pretty strong implications. But with Clint, Natasha felt no pressure to do anything she didn't want, to be anything she didn't want. There were no demands or even expectations for anything more than what she was giving. She was just herself, exactly as she wanted to be.

It took her five years to accept him and to feel accepted by him. Five years to realize that she wanted him. Wanted him as her partner, as her lifeline, as her friend. Wanted his stupid jokes and his bad driving and his no-holds-barred sparing with her. Wanted his hands against her skin and in her hair. Wanted his lips against hers, his whole body against hers.

There was fear behind her desire.

Fear of trust.

Fear of what it all might mean.

Fear of the unknown.

Natasha felt exhausted in every inch of her body, right down to her bones. And, for the moment, she let her emotions was away, losing herself in the physical sensations around her as they both drifted asleep.

** s/9392980/1/In-the-Land-of-Gods-and-Monsters**

**Here's the link to the first part of this story, if you're interested in reading it. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks everybody for reviews and follows for Revolver! I'm really excited about ****this story and I'm glad you guys are too!**

Natasha groaned in frustration as she was woken up by the sound of her phone ringing loudly on the nightstand in front of her. Detaching herself from Clint's hold on her she reached over to grab the offending device.

"Romanoff." She said with a yawn when she picked up. She glanced at the clock, it was just past nine, meaning they'd only gotten about five hours of sleep last night.

"You've got an op, how soon can you be here?"

"Uh...like an hour." She replied, pushing the covers back and untangling her legs from Clint's, who was just beginning to wake up.

"See you in my office." Coulson hung up and Natasha swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Clint sat up and ran a hand through his already messy hair, causing it to stick up even more.

"I'm going to have to take a rain check on that breakfast. Coulson just called." She told him as she stepped into her pants. Clint was upset that Natasha was being called in without him again, but just as he was about to say something, his phone rang. Coulson wanted him in too.

"Want to just roll in together?" Clint asked as he found a clean shirt and put it on.

"I'm going to run home and take a shower and get clean clothes first. Plus my car's here anyways." Natasha left the room, tying her hair up in a ponytail as she went, and started to get all of her things together in her bag and Clint followed.

"You should really stay over more often." Clint said as he started to make a pot of coffee only to realize that he had run out of coffee last night. Shrugging, he let the empty pot clatter into the sink.

"And what ever will the neighbors say?" Natasha pretended to be scandalized by the idea. Clint chuckled and shook his head at her.

"Like you give a damn about what people say about you, Natasha." He shot back as she started to get all her papers back together.

"Fair point." She admitted, with an soft smile that soon faded as she became more and more focused on the task at hand.

Even in the mornings Natasha was a whirlwind, quickly and neatly getting all of her papers reorganized and back into the box they came in. He watched her work for a minute, thinking about how far they'd come since they met five years ago, before starting to help her separate her stuff from his. When all of it had been sorted and tossed haphazardly into the box she slung her bag over her shoulder and lifted the heavy box with ease.

He got the door for her and, for once, she didn't chastise him for doing it, saying she can get it herself like she usually does. In typical Natasha fashion, she was about to walk away without another word when Clint stopped her.

"Hey, Tash."

"Mhmm." She turned back to face him, almost dropping her box when he leaned in and kissed her. She wasn't used to this, to him. His rough skin and lips, his three-day stubble, the little cleft in his chin, all of it too alien in this context. Even more alien was how she felt about it.

She'd never been big on kissing, even in her line of work, it always felt wrong, too close. But, now she found herself leaning into Clint, deepening their kiss with a tilt of her head, not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

But it was wrong too. Wrong to be so close, wrong to want him. Relationships, emotions, they got in the way, they were dangerous. They left you open and vulnerable to those who wanted to hurt you, they provided a clear and easy pressure point. They were a risk, a liability, and she knew it. She pulled away from him.

"I'll see you later."

"Uhh..yeah." He replied with a small nod, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other as he looked at her. He could see how conflicted she was about this, about him.

"Nat..." He continued after a few seconds of tense silence.

"Yeah."

"I'm glad you stayed."

"Me too." She gave him a small smile before turning to leave, Clint watching her go from his doorway.

As she stepped into the elevator, giving him once last glance over her shoulder as she did, Clint retreated back inside his apartment to get ready to the day.

Him and Natasha, who would've thought? Clint reflected on that as he went about his morning routine, thinking that basically the entire freaking planet thought that. Well, except for the two of them. Literally, they were the last ones to see that coming; his own wife, well, now ex-wife, had seen it before him.

And it was weird. Like, really weird. But, in a good way? Definitely yes.

She was incredible.

Mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, Earth-shattering types of incredible.

Just looking at the way she fights you could see it, that's why they always used her for training demonstrations. It was so jarringly different, so unique, so unpredictable that it made your head spin. Natasha was steadfastly determined when she fought, unwilling to compromise, to give any ground. She was relentless, of a mind that the best time to kick a man was when he was down. She was ruthless, she took no prisoners. Even after five years he still had trouble pinning her down, though he'd gotten much better. She would wipe the floor with his dignity and self-respect with a smile on her face, and he loved that about her. She didn't hold back anything, she always gave everything she had, never backed down from any threat, any challenge.

But, there was so much more to her than that, though most people failed to see it. She was brilliant, a veritable genius. She was fluent in about 26 languages, and conversational in another dozen, she had a wickedly talented tongue. In addition to that she knew an awful lot of practical physics that, combined with her innate knowledge of the human body, gave her a deadly edge over most opponents. She was well-versed in classic and contemporary literature, as well as being reasonable scientifically literate, especially in biology and chemistry. But her intelligence went beyond practical textbook knowledge. She was more than smart, she was clever. She thought and spoke a million miles a minute, most people, often including himself, couldn't keep up with her. She could talk her way in and out of almost any situation, anticipating every possible reaction to the situation in front her with lighting speed. She read people like they were books, picking up on even the smallest twitches of facial muscles to see what they really felt underneath their while keeping them all from seeing what was under hers. _All of them except for me_, Clint thought.

As the years went by, that mask Natasha held onto so fiercely had begun to fade away, at least with him, leaving...what exactly? Clint wasn't even sure that she knew who she was without all that pomp and circumstance, but he started to get the feeling that he did. She was much more easy-going, much softer with her words and with her actions. She seemed much more relaxed, happier, she smiled more, laughed more. But, Natasha was woman of extremes, of volcanic hots and arctic colds. With her happiness came sadness too, like she couldn't have one without the other. Her nightmares were worse, more frequent and more vivid, she drank more, smoked more, and had a greater tendency to space out when she was with him.

She felt the weight of her past more and more these days.

Even with all that, even faced with the horrors of all she'd done, and all that'd been done to her, she was still moving. Moving forward, moving on. And Natasha wasn't inherently a good person. She lived in the shadows, in the moral grey areas of the world doing the dirty work the we all knew was necessary to keep the world turning. But she chose a better life, fought for a better life doing something more productive and more meaningful that what she'd done before.

Natasha was still struggling with figuring out who she really was and all that pain was a part of it, but Clint would never stop trying to ease that pain. He would never stop trying to make her laugh, make her smile, make her happy. And he had absolutely no idea where this relationship was heading, but he was along for the ride.

Natasha didn't want to even think about Clint as she rode the elevator down to his lobby, making a mental list of all that she needed to get done before reporting to SHIELD.

"Need some help there?" Her thoughts were interrupted by the same irritating woman from the night before, Beth, Clint called her.

"No." She replied curtly. "I'm fine."

"You sure? That looks awfully heavy." The woman approached her and Natasha tensed.

"Yeah, I'm sure I'm fine." She set the box down on the ground and dug through her bag for her keys. When she found them she unlocked her car and hefted the box onto the floor in the backseat of her car.

"Alright, well, have a nice day!" The woman quipped cheerily, a bit too cheerily if you ask Natasha, and walked away. Maybe it was her, Natasha thought, maybe she was the problem, but that woman seriously creeped her out. She couldn't quite place what is was about her that made her so repulsive to Natasha, but she just seemed so wrong.

She shrugged it off as she got into the driver's seat, going back to making her list.

"You are both aware of the super soldier program the United States had running during the forties, correct?" Coulson asked. Natasha ignored the side-eye Clint shot her and nodded, after a moment, he did too.

"Well, it seems we have a new up and comer trying to recreate the process. A chinese businessman by the name of Yalin Mao has been funding a small team of scientists for over the past year. Their lab is in Calcutta and their science team is lead by a man names Sahir Rai who is widely considered to be one of the leading pioneers in the fields of genetics and synthetic biology. He was educated here in the US. We want you to kill Mao and destroy the lab, however, Fury wants Rai alive and all his research. You'll have to back up the hard drive before taking out the lab. Here are your files." He tossed two thick manila folders onto the desk, one in front of each of them.

"Any questions?" No response. "Good, now do what you two do best. Wheels up at 0800 tomorrow."

Shortly after Coulson had left, Natasha did too, leaving Clint alone, absorbed in the file. Natasha went home to pack and to read the file a few more times, her mind already running though a thousand different ways they could approach the situation. She was surprised when Clint appeared at her door.

"Nice shirt." He commented as she let him inside. She'd changed again when she'd gotten home, now she was wearing a pair of black cotton shorts and the shirt Clint had let her borrow last night.

"It's really comfy." She shrugged. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I figured we should do some actual work tonight."

"Since when do you want to do actual work before we leave?" Natasha asked in disbelief, taking a seat on her couch. Clint followed her lead and sat down at the other end.

"Since I was bored and the urge to be productive hit me." He picked up the file on her coffee table and began to spread out the papers, trying to look at as much as he could at once.

Around ten Natasha had gotten tired of work and began shuffling the papers back into their folder.

"Natasha!" Clint protested, trying to stop her from tearing apart his organized piles of information.

"It's getting late, we have to be somewhere in the morning, and we got almost no sleep last night. This," She held up the papers in her hands. "can wait. Let's go to bed."

Clint sighed in resignation, taking the hand that she offered him to pull him to his feet. She pulled on him a little harder than he was expecting and stumbled forward, his hands grabbing onto her hips to steady himself and prevent them both from toppling over.

"Does that mean you'll let me stay?" He asked, lowering his voice.

"Only if you want to." Natasha looked down at the ground, bringing her hands up to rest on top of his to detach them, then, changing her mind last minute, she simply let them rest there.

"Always." He told her, pulling her closer to him. "If I'm staying, can I at least have my shirt back then?" He asked, playing with the hem.

"Nope." She replied, smiling up at him. "I like it." She grabbed his hand and turned away from him, leading him to her room.

"I guess I'm just going to have to steal it from you."

"I'd like to see you try." She shot back, surprised when Clint grabbed her waist, spun her around and kissed her.

"I think I just might." His voice, low and needy, made Natasha shiver. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with equal enthusiasm. Their kiss quickly grew more heated as Natasha parted her lips, letting Clint's tongue explore her mouth freely, for once, not putting up a fight. She soon found herself backed up against her door, Clint's body pressed up against hers, his hands on her hips, her back, her shoulders, her hair, like he couldn't get enough of her.

Natasha fumbled with the door knob for a moment, but after a second, the pressure behind her gave way and she was stumbling backwards into the darkness of her room, clinging tightly to Clint the whole time. They both fell backwards onto her bed with a slight _oof_ and they both laughed as bed sagged slightly under the weight of both of them. Natasha reached up and brought Clint's mouth back against her's, arching he body up against his, he smiled against her lips. His hands slipped under her shirt, lightly gliding along the soft flesh of her stomach, and Natasha suddenly panicked.

Clint was roughly shoved away and Natasha scrambled away from him to the other side of the bed.

"Fuck!" She cursed, running her hands through her hair.

"Are you okay, Nat? " Clint asked hesitantly.

"I'm sorry, I just...I can't do this with you." She stammered out, her breathing labored and uneven.

"Natasha?" He called, taking a small step towards her, but she held out her hands for him to stop.

"I think you should just go, Clint." She refused to look up at him, keeping her gaze fixed to the very center of the bed.

"Natasha, if I did anything..." Clint started to apologize, making Natasha even more tense.

"You didn't do anything, I just really need you to leave right now." He hesitated for a moment, not sure what was happening or what he should do about it.

"Okay, Tasha." He very reluctantly began to back out of the room, wanting nothing more than to stay and help fix whatever had just broken, but knowing that Natasha needed some space. She looked as confused and upset as he felt, but he didn't know why. Regardless, he left, closing her door softly behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**I'm going out of town on Monday, so this might be last update before I leave. I'm going to try and squeeze in another quick chapter before I go, but we'll see. **

**Anyways, thanks for all the favs/follows. I'm glad you all like this story so far!**

**Keep up the reviews! They are always welcomed and appreciated!**

Natasha dropped her stuff off at the plane in the hangar before heading off towards the armory to pack up her weapons and suit in their standard military-grade containers for transport. And although she already had her spare suit packed with the rest of her luggage, and plenty of weapons in her apartment, she preferred to keep her official gear locked up in SHIELD storage.

When she rounded the corner to her storage locker she saw none other than Clint Barton. He was sitting on one of the benches that sat in between the rows of lockers with his elbows on his knees, hunched over with his head in his hands. She walked silently into the room and simply went about her business. He jumped when he looked up and she had suddenly appeared in front of him, but he felt like he shouldn't really be surprised by it anymore.

"Hey, I wanted to talk." Clint said, standing up and stretching out his legs and arms.

"I gathered that much." Natasha responded flatly as she took out a heavy, black case and set it down on the bench. She pressed her thumb into the small, silver disk on the front, barely registering the sharp prick in her finger from the mechanism. A moment later the locks snapped open and she opened the lid.

She loved the SHIELD personal weapons containers. Absolutely loved them. They were heavy-duty cases that were practically indestructible, even by her standards, with individually tailored inserted linings molded to the exact specs of her weapons. Each container had a locking mechanism that was physically impossible to pick with a rather unique biometric lock that read blood instead of fingerprints which made them a lot harder to trick, especially in Natasha's case. And when the wrong blood was used to try and open the case, and alert was immediately sent to the registered owner as well as SHIELD HQ. Not even Clint could get into her weapons when she had them in storage, and that meant nobody could mess up her system.

"Look, I just wanted to apologize for last night. I didn't mean to push you..."

"I think we should just go back to being partners." Natasha interrupted him.

"What?"

"This...whatever this even is...I want it to stop. You and me, we're partners, nothing more." She had been working as they talked, placing each weapon carefully in its place, and now she slammed the lid down harder than she'd intended, revealing just how tense she was.

A long silence settled in the air between them as they stared each other down.

Natasha twitched in nervousness as she waited for Clint to say something.

"You know how I learned to do all those impossible shots I take?" He asked, leaning against the locker next to Natasha's.

"What?" She had no idea where he was going with this.

"You know, the ones that you never think I'll be able to make because it's at an extreme angle, or it's a long distance, or a heavy wind, or really precise target that's moving and highly explosive, and you always say I'm not going to make it, but then I always do. The impossible shots where you shake your head in disbelief and say 'nice shot Wonderboy'."

"Clint, what does this have to do with..."

"I learned how to make those shots because I learned that you're going to miss every shot you don't take. Every shot you can't be bothered to take. Archery was the only thing I ever truly cared about, I spent hours upon hours trying the most ridiculous shots I could think of as a kid. Because if it's worth caring about, it's worth the shot. Now matter how impossible it might seem, you take the damn shot, Natasha."

"And if you miss?"

"Then you miss." He shrugged noncommittally

"Why take it at all then?"

"You are such a fucking tourist." He muttered, rolling his eyes.

"What?" She snapped, slamming her locker door shut a lot harder that was, strictly speaking, necessary.

"You have never cared about anything or anyone that didn't keep you alive or further your own agenda. You never let yourself care. And, that's not living Natasha, that's, I don't know, watching other people live."

Natasha chewed on his words for a moment, trying to process it all and turn it into something that made sense to her.

"What if I'm just not ready to take the shot?" She asked, her voice shaking slightly despite her best attempts to keep herself steady.

Clint's brow furrowed as he thought, he then pushed away from the locker he was leaning on and walked over to his own, just a few down. He pulled out his own storage case, and out of that he took his bow, snapping it out of its collapsed form to full length. He walked back over to her and shoved it into her hands.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Though she was thinking more about how she didn't think she'd ever actually held his bow. The weapon seemed too close to him, to much a part of him for her to even ask about it.

"Draw the bowstring back." He instructed. She shifted the bow in her hand until her fingers fell into the grip much too large for her own hand. She raised her right arms straight, parallel to the floor, her left fingers gently plucking the taunt wire. Clint walked around her, staring her down critically and she suddenly felt very subconscious about having his weapon in her hands, even more so when he corrected her stance with gently, guiding touches to her shoulders and back.

"Okay, try now." He told her. Her fingers curled around the string, feeling the wire trying to imbed itself in her skin as she pulled back. She pulled with all her strength, and yet, she couldn't manage to get it even halfway drawn.

"Not as easy as it looks, is it?" Clint took the bow back from her and easily drew the bowstring back all the way. "And we could talk about the biggest bow cliche ever, about how you have to draw back before you can go forward. But, there's a better story I like. See, you can't draw this bow, Natasha. No matter how hard you try, no matter how long we stand here, right now, you cannot draw this bow. When I started, neither could I. Behind every shot you take there's years of training, of work, it's not just one second, one moment. The result, whether you hit or miss, is what you make it, how hard you worked, how much you wanted it. You might not be ready to take the shot today, may not have the strength today or tomorrow or even a year from now, but one day you will. One day you'll draw back and let loose and know that the outcome is what _you _make it Natasha, not anybody else but you."

"But what about you? And can we drop the fucking metaphor already?"

"This isn't about me, Natasha."

"If you're the metaphorical target, then it's about you too."

"Target's not moving. I'm not going anywhere. This is about you and what you want and when you want it. I was married, remember? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, I can wait. I'm a sniper, it's basically in my job description to wait, it's what I'm good at. I'm not ever going to make you do anything you don't want to do, what you're not ready to do. I'm just asking that you don't give up on this, that you don't shut me out."

"Clint, we can't and you know it." She grabbed her case off the bench and started to leave, but he quickly got in front of her, blocking her path.

"If you say one word about SHIELD protocol, I swear to god, I will stab myself in the face."

"Don't be such a fucking drama queen."

"Don't be such a fucking hypocrite." He shot back and her eyes narrowed. "You've never given a rat's ass about any SHIELD rule, ever. You're only hiding behind them now because it's convenient and that's bullshit. If you don't want me in your life, just fucking tell me and I'll walk away, but quite making excuses about this because you're scared, Natasha."

"I don't not want you." Natasha said after some time with a considerable amount of effort, her entire body completely rigid. She made it sound like she would rather be eating glass than talking to him and Clint supposed that, with Natasha, that was probably the case. Clint chuckled, shaking his head at her.

"Well, good. I'm glad we got that sorted out." She relaxed, as she often did, at his light-heartedness.

"C'mon Wonderboy." She nudged her case against his knee. "We're late."

* * *

"I like it better when it's more spying, less killing. Better accommodations." Clint's disdain was almost comical as they both carried in their stuff from the SUV.

"We've stayed in worse." Natasha pointed out. "At least it isn't some skeevy motel.

"Fair." He conceded. They were staying in a pretty run down apartment that was about two blocks from the red light districts. It was dank and dirty and the bed had a vaguely moldy smell, there was little running water and it was, above all other things, hot. Hot and humid. It was sticky and smothering and Natasha absolutely hated it, but Clint seemed unfazed by it. They were staying in this particular apartment for a reason though.

Across the street lived a scientist that had just been recruited to work under Sahir Rai, he started work at the lab last week. He was an American scientist by the name of Tyler Fredrickson who was a low-clearance techie, but even low clearance access would get them on site. The rest Clint could manage on his own.

Clint was going to infiltrate the lab in order to back up the hard drive to a specially encrypted flashdrive that they'd been given by SHIELD before they left while Natasha's role was a little more complex, having to both kidnap Rai and kill Mao without spooking either one.

His plan was simple: kill the techie across the way and take his access card to get inside. Once in he would manually bypass the security system, which was outdated at best, into the server room. Once the information had been secured he'd have to make his way out quickly, tripping the fire alarm as he did. If he was going to blow up a building, he wanted to make sure as few people were inside it as possible. Since the building was already rigged to blow, Mao, being the overly paranoid son of a bitch that he was, made the last leg of their mission easy. Having already patched himself into their systems, he could remotely detonate the explosives in the building once it had been evacuated.

Natasha's plan had a few more moving parts that required her to be several different people all at once. But, she'd juggled more for less in the past. The night they got in Natasha went out, ensuring that Rai's PA would suddenly get very, very ill and would need to go to the hospital. She'd live, but it wasn't what Natasha would call an ideal night out for the poor girl. The night she and Clint had worked over at her apartment she'd hacked the temp agency that Rai used for his PA's, changing them out every few weeks so no one person knew too much, and arranged for a certain new, young American to replace her. That would give her access and opportunity to Rai, Mao was another story. But one she was more than capable of handling.

When night had settled, or as close to night as a busy city came, Clint found his perch and his bow, sliding his quiver into place on his back. He drew a single arrow, razor sharp, but ordinary and notched it, waiting. It seemed like an eternity to Natasha, who watched him as he waited, his eyes sharp and focused, flitting back and forth, taking in every detail, every movement from across the way, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration, a concentration that never faltered or broke. He never moved either, never made a sound, just waited. Natasha had gotten bored hours ago, and was dozing off when she heard a slight rusting of fabric from his perch, the slight thrum of the arrow being loosed seemed to echo in their silent room before the shattering of glass snapped Natasha completely out of her daze.

Clint rose from where he had been crouched down for the past few hours. Sliding his bow over his head to let his hands be free he climbed out the window with a surprising grace and made his way down to the street below. Natasha waited intently until his blond head popped back through the window about 15 minutes later, flashing her the ID card in his hand as he pulled himself through, the frame nearly too narrow for his broad shoulders.

"You good?" She asked, unmoving from her seat on the bed.

"Yeah." There was a vacantness in his voice, a deadness that always came when he killed somebody. It was like he went numb, or into some sort of shell to deal with killing people and Natasha never really knew what to do, so she always just did nothing. Acted as if it were okay, normal, and in reality, this was normal for them.

"You're up tomorrow." He packed up his weapons and pulled his shirt off, relishing the slight breeze that came in through the window against his bare skin. He flopped down on the bed beside Natasha. Lying on his back he stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about much of anything until he felt Natasha stir uneasily beside him. Clint rolled onto his side to face her, propping his head up on his hand.

"Bed?" She asked, uncrossing her legs. Clint nodded, grateful, for once, that Natasha was not a particularly chatty person as she curled up beside him.

* * *

Nicole Richards made quite the impression on her first day, her new boss seemed very fond of his bright and bubbly new assistant. She was personable, talkative, and took direction very well, he much preferred her to his old girl, not to mention that she was easy on the eyes and seemed very eager to please.

On her second day, Nicole set all the wheels turning, her plan in motion.

"You have a four o'clock meeting with that new group of investors this afternoon, Dr. Rai." She reminded him with a smile.

"Yes, thank you Nicole. I have a car picking me up at 3:30, and I'd like you to accompany me." She nodded appreciatively, then left his office.

She sat through the meeting, pretending to take copious amounts of notes as they went on and on and on about investment options and returns and their 'product'. Natasha was bored the second she walked into that room, but she needed this meeting to make her plan work.

When all was said and done, the two of them climbed back into their car to go back to the lab.

Except, they never made it back.

* * *

"Hawkeye, you in?" Natasha breathed into her comm as she paced their dingy lodgings with an unconscious doctor handcuffed and tied up in the bathtub.

"I'm in, Widow. You sure this is going to work?"

"Mao isn't in Calcutta now, we need a way to draw him out. Blowing up his lab might just get his attention. Just back the hard drive and get out."

"Copy. See you soon, Widow."

Natasha paced, the radio silence almost deafening in her ear.

"Fuck." Clint swore angrily only minutes later.

"What's up?"

"I think we may have underestimated their security system." Clint told her, his distress apparent in his voice.

"What makes you say that?"

"Let's just say the computer doesn't like it when you try to force your way into the system." She heard some rustling over the line, and she was trying to keep her rising uneasiness in check.

"Clint, tell me what's going on." She all but ordered him.

"The mission's blown, Nat. And, I think, so am I."

Natasha's unease exploded into a full blown panic as his words sunk in.

"Get out of there, Clint."

"Yeah, Nat, I'm working on it." He snapped back, yanking on the fire alarm. Both their ears filled with the loud, blaring alarms sounding throughout the building. They said no more to each other as Clint rushed through the halls, silently cursing whoever designed this place and thought it was a good idea to put the computer room in the basement, furthest from any exits.

Natasha was frozen in place back at the apartment, hating herself for not being there, for being useless and helpless. She tried to focus on his breathing instead, tried holding onto the fact that, for right now, he was still alive. He was going to be okay, this was Clint, he was always okay.

She almost convinced herself that it was true.

Then she winced as a shrill, piercing sound assaulted her eardrum.

"Clint?" She called and she froze, her heart sinking.

"CLINT!" She shouted into her comm.

There was no response. Nothing. Only static.


	4. Chapter 4

**I planned on ending this a little later, but I cut it off early so I could post it before I left. I'll be sans internet until the 23rd, so check back for another update around the 25th, most likely.**

**Anyways, it would be super awesome if you guys left me some new reviews to read for when I got back!**

"Ma'am, I need you to back up behind the barricade." A uniformed man instructed her in bengali. Natasha flashed her SHIELD badge and he reluctantly walked away.

Concrete rubble crunched beneath her feet as she stepped through to find someone in charge of something. She had always loved explosions before, when she lived and thrived off confusion and chaos, when they were simply distractions or diversions or statements. She never saw them for what they were until this moment.

They were devastating.

It was all smoke and ash, firefighters still working to quench the last of the flames amongst the concrete rubble. Everywhere there was shouting. Men and women for help, for their mothers, for their gods, sounds of anguish and agony, of pain beyond words and beyond help. First responders barking orders and coordinating movements as a hurricane of people worked to salvage who and what was left of the building. Sirens wailed from all directions as emergency vehicles piled up and more and more people were added to the already swirling storm. The smell of singed metal and flesh was revolting, especially when mixed the stench of death that hung in the air like a thick fog, unescapable.

"Agent Romanoff!" And unfamiliar voice called. She turned to see a pair of SHIELD agents approaching her, both flashing their badges at the local authorities like she did.

"I'm Agent Pritish and this is Agent Sullivan, from the local office. We understand that you were on an op when this occurred." The woman was a few inches taller than her and dressed in what seemed to be a standard issue SHIELD suit. She was all business.

"My parter was inside the building when it went, I think. I'm not sure. Our comms cut out. I have to find him." Natasha could feel her heart racing and she couldn't slow it down. In this mess, he could be anywhere, or nowhere.

"We've got all the local hospitals on alert for Agent Barton, they'll notify us if he comes into any of them." The woman tried to sound reassuring, but Natasha wasn't buying it.

"We are going to find him now, not wait for some damn report to come in. I'll check triage stations one and two. You two take three through five." Neither of them showed any indication of moving. "Find my parter, find him now, or I swear I will do everything in my power to make your life a living hell. And trust me when I say that my power is _very _extensive." She lowered her voice to a threatening growl, and both agents took a step back from her.

"Yes ma'am." Sullivan managed to get out. Turning to leave, he tugged what Natasha presumed to be his partner along with him off to the triage stations.

Natasha walked off as well, diving deep into a mass of the dead and dying in the worst of the worst triage stations. The movement around her was a blur as people were being constantly moved around, from bed to bed, loaded onto stretchers being carted to and fro, people being rushed into ambulances. She saw people with missing limbs, people impaled by metal spikes, people with faces burned so badly you could hardly tell they were human, and all of them wailing and whimpering and sobbing. Natasha felt sick.

She stopped her walking for a moment to catch her breath and to take a long look at the ambulances being loaded and her heart nearly stopped when she spotted a shock a bright blond hair attached to a stretcher. Natasha broke out into a run, a dead sprint, to reach the ambulance before they carted him off. She climbed into the front of the ambulance and briefly argued with the driver in bengali. When she flashed her badge, he let her stay.

Natasha was so wound up she wanted to rip her fucking skin off. Clint was four feet from her and dying and she could see him, then at the hospital the wheeled him away without telling her a damn thing, simply shuffling her off into a private waiting room with, she guessed, her SHIELD status afforded her. After about and hour of her anxious pacing, the two local-office agents showed up. With her car too, no less. For that, at least, she was grateful since she at lease kept a book in the glove compartment to pass the time as she waited. They didn't speak.

It was five hours until a doctor came to talk to her. It seemed the worst of his injuries was his shattered left forearm. Besides that, both of his lungs had collapsed in the explosion, and one had detaches itself completely, and nearly every rib has been broken or cracked. He had several deep lacerations on his left side that had to be stitched, but cause a significant amount of blood loss, he had several brain contusions, and some internal bleeding to boot.

"You might want to contact his family." The doctor advised, and Natasha knew what that meant. They thought he was going to die.

"He doesn't..." Natasha tried to talk, but she couldn't quite catch her breath, like the air was being squeezed out of her and she couldn't breath back in. She ran her hands through her hair to try and calm down, but it didn't seem to help any. "He's got...there's...no one." She managed to finish. _Only me_, she thought.

They told her that he was still in critical condition, that she couldn't see him. That she had to stay stuck in this tiny room where she couldn't breathe and couldn't move, she'd never felt more useless in her entire life.

She sent the local agents away, told them she didn't want them there, so they went to go pick up Dr. Rai from where he was still tied up in the apartment to get him boxed up and ready to ship back to the states.

She was alone again and alone was good, alone she could deal with. There was no pressure to please or perform or conform when she was alone. She had been alone her whole life until she met Clint and now, it seemed, she would have to go back. The thought didn't help to calm her down any.

She'd exhausted herself pacing hours ago, couldn't focus enough to read, didn't want to think about much of anything, so she sat in completely, deathly stillness, mentally checking out. Natasha learned how to just sort of turn off her brain when she wanted, it was her way of coping with her training back in the Red Room, finding a way not to think or to feel, just simply to exist, even if only for a short while, with nothing. It was a slice of serenity. No past, no future.

She didn't know how much time had passed when another visitor entered the room. The vaguely registered the door opening and closing, vaguely heard two voices talking quietly together, they were familiar to her, but she didn't bother to focus enough to place them until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her immediate reaction was to attack, and she did. She stood up abruptly, twisting the arms sharply and pushed him away before drawing her gun, only lowering it when she realized the had her weapon leveled at Director Fury.

"Shit, fuck, I'm sorry." She quickly apologized, tucking the gun back into the waist of her pants. "Old habits."

"Agent Romanoff, always a pleasure." He responded dryly, unfazed by the attack.

"Don't take this the wrong way, sir, but what are you doing here?" Natasha asked, sitting back down.

"You know, contrary to popular belief, I do actually care about the well-being of my agents." Fury sat down in the chair opposite her, Coulson sat next to him.

"All your agents, or just the good ones?" Fury narrowed his eyes at her and she smirked. "You don't have to answer that." Natasha always did get a special kind of joy out of getting her boss worked up, Clint did too. Though, they both suspected that he enjoyed the break in monotony they gave him.

"How is he?" Coulson cut through their conversation to bring it back to something a little more relevant.

"Not good. It's still a toss up." She regaled the information the doctor had reported to her, trying to read Fury's reaction, and ultimately failing to do so. They sat in silence until, and hour later, a different doctor came in to talk to them. They were taking Clint for another surgery to repair his detached lung, after that, they'd have a better idea on his condition. Natasha tried to feel at least a little relieved knowing that they'd soon have an answer the the question she didn't want to ask soon.

They all sat in silence, but now Natasha felt uneasy. She'd never been in a room this long with either of them, and she knew they had a thousand questions they were waiting to spring on her. When she couldn't take it anymore she got up, muttering that she needed some fresh air and made a quick exit. It felt good to escape, even for a little while, and the air felt good, even if it was hot.

She found the car and climbed into the driver's seat and, after rolling down the windows, lit a cigarette, trying to go back into her blanked out state pre-interruption. She was almost there when she heard the passenger door open and Coulson slid into the seat beside her.

"I didn't know you smoked." He commented, it was evident that he was uncomfortable.

"I'm willing to be there's a lot you don't know about me." She shot him a small smile and he seemed to relax. He rarely spoke to Natasha outside of an official capacity, she seemed to prefer it that way. It was no secret that he was much closer to Clint than to her.

"You'd win that bet." He admitted, then said no more. And uncomfortable silence settled between them, unasked questions hanging in the air.

"So why're you here?" Natasha asked eventually, growing tired of waiting.

"I have a question for you."

"Fire away." She finished the cigarette she was on and lit another.

"What are you going to do if Clint dies?" No beating around the bush, she liked that about Coulson, though maybe not in this particular moment. Natasha froze, the newly lit cigarette smoldering between her fingers only inches from her mouth.

"Would you stay?" Coulson prompted, knowing she would need it.

"Probably not." She replied, her features and voice blank of any emotion. "Would you still hunt me down if I left?"

"Probably not." Coulson smiled at her, thinking about how different she was from when they'd first met. "I think you've earned a retirement, should you choose one."

"I think we both know me leaving SHIELD wouldn't exactly be a retirement."

"Yeah well, nobody else has to, now do they?" It was Natasha's turn to smile. She'd grown very fond of Coulson during his time as their handler, he seemed to enjoy breaking the rules as much as they did. He always had their backs, was always in their side, she like him.

Silence fell again, though this one considerably less tense.

"You know I ask all my agents that question when the time comes?" Coulson asked.

"When what time comes?"

"When the life of the person they trust most hangs in the balance. When they have to face how they really feel and what they really want. Death, even the threat of death, has a way of making our priorities very clear to us." Coulson explained, his voice drifting off near the end.

"Did you ask Clint?" She wanted to know how he'd answered.

"Of course, you've been in a bad spot more than once. I've asked him twice, and gotten a different answer both times." Coulson smiled at the thought. Clint was always a tricky one too, no wonder he and Natasha were perfect for each other.

"The first time was when you got back from that reverse interrogation that went horribly sideways and worked out really well all at the same time. Still not sure how you did that, but hey, that's your business. When you were still in your coma I asked."

"And?" Natasha pressed him when he didn't continue.

"He said he'd regret that he couldn't and didn't do more for you. When I asked what he'd do at SHIELD, he'd said he'd carry on as normal, that solo missions did always suit him better." Natasha dropped her gaze to her lap, feeling, for the first time in forever, ashamed.

"I asked him again after we got you back from Russia." Natasha visibly tensed, but Coulson continued. "He said he didn't know if he'd stay. He didn't know if he could just continue on without you, if he could go back to doing solo missions after working with you. And I know Clint, I've known him for a long time, so I know it's the truth when he said that losing you would probably result in some sort of relapse. At least he's self-aware." Coulson chuckled, trying to lighten the mood, but it didn't help.

Natasha felt like she'd been punched in the gut.

"Would you go back to Russia?" Coulson asked, the question seemed to be born more out personal curiosity than professional.

"Given the right circumstances, maybe." She shrugged.

"Even after everything they did to you?"

"Because of everything they did to me." Coulson was very confused.

"Why?"

"I was born there, raised there. And, as much as I hate to say, there will always be a place for me there. It's were I'm supposed to belong, not here. It was them that trained me, taught me how to fight, to survive. So, it wasn't all bad. I think they know that I if ever voluntarily went back to them, I'd have to be working on my own terms. And, I think they'd accept that."

"You'd go back and work for the people who want you dead?" Coulson could believe a lot of things about Natasha, and that was not one of them.

"On the contrary, they want me very much alive. They were never going to let me die back in Russia. I'm much to valuable alive. But, like I said, the circumstances would have to be right."

"What would the 'right' circumstances be then?" Natasha didn't answer, only smiled, and Coulson knew she wasn't going to say anymore.

"What are you going to do if Clint dies, Coulson?" Her handler opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

"You know, I've never been asked that question." He scratched his head. "I don't know."

"Well, you might want to find out." On that note, Natasha left, going back inside to wait in that tiny room some more.


	5. Chapter 5

**It's good to be back! Hope the wait was worth it for you guys!**

Natasha had always hated waiting, at least, idle waiting where you couldn't really do anything but fuck around and twiddle your thumbs while somebody else did the work. God, it was frustrating. And Coulson and Fury being here with her didn't help either. The two of them took turns staying with Natasha at the hospital so the other could sleep, often suggesting that Natasha do the same. She declined every time and, after a while, they just stopped trying to get her to leave. Clint had been in the hospital for almost three days by now, and she still hadn't been allowed to see him, and they still were unsure if he would make it.

She was angry, angrier than she'd been in a long time. She felt like strangling the doctor every single time he opened his mouth and said there was nothing more they could do for him. She almost shot him when he said that Clint was in God's hands now. If Fury hadn't been there, she might have.

Coulson had taken over for the director a few hours ago, and had gone off in search of lunch for the two of them when another unexpected visitor showed up.

"Natasha!" A woman called. Natasha turned to find herself in a crushing hug with a face full of thin, blonde hair.

"Bobbi?" Natasha pulled, away from the embrace. "What are you doing here?"

"Fury called me in to take in Mao when his plane landed." She explained a little uneasily. Natasha went from mildly curious to pissed in the blink of an eye, and Bobbi saw it. She took a step back from the angry Russian, putting her hands up defensively. Natasha pulled her phone out of her shirt and quickly dialed a number, her fingers punching the buttons aggressively. The phone rang out, no answer. She turned and threw the phone at the nearest wall, the force causing the small device to shatter completely, sending shard of plastic flying everywhere. Bobbi put a few more feet between them, careful not to show any emotion for fear of getting Natasha more worked up than she already was.

Just as Natasha's breathing was beginning to slow, Director Fury walked in.

"Something the matter Romanoff?" He drawled, eyeing the dent in the wall and the debris around it.

"You are a real son of a bitch Fury, you know that?" She snapped, her trigger finger twitched reflexively by her side.

"So I've been told." He walked over to her, plastic crunching beneath his boots. "Please tell me that was your personal phone."

Natasha scoffed.

"Like I would throw my personal phone at a wall."

"That's coming out of you paycheck." He shot her a pointed look, Natasha thought he looked almost amused but, with one eye, it was always hard to read him.

"Maybe if you picked up your goddamn phone when I called we wouldn't be in this situation."

"Why would I take your call when I was right out side the fucking door?" Bobbi watched this entire interaction and was greatly amused. The director of SHIELD and his top field agent bickered like divorced parents.

"Well, how was I supposed to know you were outside?" Natasha shot back and Fury rubbed his temples in frustration.

"Just tell me why you smashed the fucking phone, or do I not want to know?"

"Because you gave _my _mission to another agent. And you didn't even tell me about it." Fury sighed, he should've known she'd be pissed.

"Is this because I took you off the mission, or that I gave it to Morse?"

"I think if it were anybody but Bobbi, I'd be even angrier. I actually like Bobbi and I still want to strangle you." Fury cocked his head at her. "Yeah, we're good now." Her tone suggested that it was obvious. "Read your fucking memos sometime, Boss."

"You put that in a memo?" He couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

"No." Her condescending tone put Fury on edge, as always. She always did enjoy making him feel stupid. "Why would I ever put that in a memo? Don't answer that. Just tell me why I wasn't allowed to finish _my _mission."

Fury sighed and sat down, motioning her to the seat across from him when she gave no indication of moving. Bobbi waited, feeling a little awkward, behind Natasha.

"Honestly, Romanoff, because I don't trust your judgement right now. You just whipped a phone at the wall for no real reason, you've threatened multiple doctors and nurses with bodily harm, and you spend half your waking hours chain smoking in the parking lot. You are the last person I want doing a job right now."

"Okay, fair points on all accounts. I might even be okay with that if you had just had the bastard killed. No, you changed the mission. Clint's dying, Fury, and the man responsible is still alive. Why?"

"If Clint lives, Mao will answer to me personally."

"And if he dies?"

"He'll answer to you." Fury let his words sink in. Natasha's fire, once aflame with rage cooled and settled into her usual composed mask and she nodded once, marking the end of their conversation. Fury turned and left, motioning for Bobbi to follow him, and Natasha was alone again.

Some time later the door opened again, Natasha expected it to be Coulson returning, but it was Clint's doctor. She held her breath in anticipation as he went on in excruciating detail the surgeries they performed on Clint.

"He's stable now, we think he's going to make it." Those were the only words that mattered. Natasha breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling like a giant weight had been lifted off her. Clint was going to live.

"You can see him now if you want." She followed the doctor through a series of winding hallways until he stopped at the door of a room and gestured inside.

"Let us know if his condition changes any." He was going to say something else, but Natasha ignored him and just pushed past him through the door, letting it swing loudly shut behind her.

Looking at him for the first time in days, Natasha could hardly believe that the man on this hospital bed was her partner. He was half bandages and bruised with wires attached everywhere and tubes running into his arms and jammed down his throat, nothing like she'd ever seen. She dragged a chair over to be closer to his bed and sat down, wondering how Clint felt when he'd seen her like this.

Natasha was just confused. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, or say, or anything. It's not like she'd ever been in this situation before; never in her entire life had Natasha visited somebody at a hospital, she was usually the one who put them there. She sat in her chair her hands feeling heavy in her lap and she looked him over, taking in the sight of the broken man who'd always been the stronger one. Clint was clumsy and impulsive and there was never less than three cuts and bruises on him at all times, but it never got like this. It was always Natasha who's danced to closely with death, she took the big risks that few people would dare to take. I guess that's what happens when you're raised to be a sacrifice.

For lack of a better idea, Natasha took his hand in hers, threading their fingers together like Clint always would when she was injured and he was by her side. She always knew that the roles would be reversed one day, though that day had come too soon; any day would've been too soon for Natasha.

That's how she spent the next week, hand in hand with a virtual corpse, doing nothing but hoping and waiting for life to return to her partner. She was grateful that Bobbi was there. They spoke little, but Natasha liked having her around. Fury and Coulson stayed too, and that made Natasha restless. Why were they still here, didn't they have better things to do than hang out in a hospital with a comatose agent? Those thoughts occasionally gnawed at her, but she largely ignored them, she was trained not to question her superiors.

"What's this all like for you, Natasha?" Bobbi asked her one evening after dinner.

"What?" She had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

"Working for SHIELD, the organization that wants nothing more than to bring down the one that trained you. You used to fight against us, now you're with us, is it weird?" Bobbi had always wondered, but hadn't had the courage to ask until now.

"Honestly, it's more or less the same." Natasha shrugged, as if it were a proper answer.

"Really?"

"Eh, same story different version. There isn't any clear-cut 'good' and 'bad' in this line of work, both sides are more or less the same, doesn't really matter who I'm killing for, I'm still killing."

"Well, that's just the work. What about you, personally? How do you feel about your own life on the other side? Are you happy, Natasha?"

"Sometimes." She gave another shrug.

"As opposed to...?"

"I was happy sometimes there too." Bobbi and Natasha stared at each other in silence for a long time, neither one saying anything until Bobbi spoke up again.

"Who would you rather have?" She asked softly, knowing she was venturing into dangerous waters. Natasha gave her a small complimentary smile. Bobbi knew it wasn't about the big organizations, loyalty to faceless, nameless entities meant nothing to Natasha, Bobbi knew it had to something closer, something personal. Natasha looked away from Bobbi and back at Clint, she thought he might actually look his age in this hospital bed. He'd hate that.

"I'd rather have him." She admitted, so quietly that Bobbi almost couldn't hear. The companionable silence between the two of them settled again, and they spoke about nothing else for the remainder of the day. Early the next morning Bobbi was called back to New York to assist on an op; Natasha was sorry to see her go.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning on the 15th day of the hospital Clint finally woke up. By that time both Fury and Coulson had given up the wait, leaving back to NY. Natasha had passed out bent over in the chair beside his bed, her hand interlocked with his with her forehead resting on the edge of the bed. At first she heard a slight uptick in the beeping of the monitors that had incessantly hammered at her for days on end, then a groan. She snapped her head up and Clint was stirring slightly in his bed, she clutched his hand even tighter, grabbing his hand with both of hers.

"Clint?" She tried, hoping he would hear, would respond. His head flopped over in her direction and his eyes fluttered open, his grey eyes that were almost lost, and he muttered something unintelligible.

Clint felt like he'd been hit by a truck, or, more accurately like a building had fell of him. Everything, absolutely everything, hurt. And everything was thick and foggy, he couldn't think and he couldn't move, it was agonizing. He tried to shake his head out, but only managed to move his head to one side, though he now opened his eyes. Red, red and green and white. Natasha? He tried to ask but the words got all jumbled together in his throat and he felt something on his hand too, was it hers? Yes, yes this was Natasha, the fog began to clear and he knew that was her now. He would know those eyes anywhere. Clint looked around to get a better handle on his surrounding. A hospital, great. Heart rate wires on his chest, he knew the smell of antiseptic and the feel of an IV drip all too well, there was no mistaking this.

He scrambled to remove this breathing tube from his nose, but his hands were stayed by Natasha's and he was too weak to fight her so he let her take his hand back down to his side. A moment later he discovered why they had him on oxygen when he tried to take a deep breath and acute pain shot threw him, he nearly passed out all over again.

Then he saw doctors come in, doctors and nurses with clipboard and questions and tests and this was always the worst part. There was a flurry of movement but something was off, it was quiet, unnaturally quiet for a hospital, it unnerved him. He looked around at all the faces, none familiar except for Natasha's and began to panic. He grabbed Natasha's hand and squeezed tight, too tight. He felt her stiffen and suddenly the doctors were gone, and he saw only Natasha and he began to calm down again. He looked up at her, she was talking, her lips were moving but there was no sound. He reached up and placed a hand on her throat, felt the vibrations to make sure but there was still only silence.

A piece of paper was shoved in his face with Natasha's neat print on it.

**Clint, can you hear me?**

No, he couldn't.


	6. Chapter 6

**First and foremost, I would like to offer all of you my sincerest apologies that I haven't updated literally all summer. We had a death in the computer family, and my poor little guy just up and quit on me. But, my big brother brought his computer home from his girlfriend's house so I figured I should probably write something. **

**I hope you enjoy this chapter and please, please review!**

"What do you mean there's nothing you can do for him? This is a goddamn hospital, fix him." Natasha was absolutely seething. She couldn't believe that in the entire fucking building that nobody had any means of finding a solution to Clint's hearing.

Shortly after they discovered that Clint had lost his hearing, the doctors rushed in to do yet another round of tests and found that both of Clint's ear canals had collapsed in the explosion causing his eardrums to rupture as well. In short, he couldn't hear a damn thing anymore.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we simply don't have the resources to help him. Restoring hearing in a collapsed ear canal, even with a hearing aid, is very difficult, and we don't have the supplies or the medical know-how here to help him."

Natasha wanted to strangle this fucking doctor.

"Fine, if you can't help him, I'm taking him stateside." Natasha turned to leave the doctor, wanting to go back to Clint's room when the doctor's hand closed around her wrist.

"Ma'am, you can't…" He began, but his words were soon choked off by a cry of pain as Natasha pried his fingers from her, her hand locking the joints in his, giving her total control over his upper body.

"Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do. If you can't help him, I'm going to find someone who can. You are no longer of use to me so I suggest you stay out of my way." She roughly released the doctor and left him standing in the hallway rubbing his now bruised hand and wishing this woman had never shown up here.

Natasha arrived back at Clint's room just as he did, his testing having been completed. She motioned for the nurse wheeling his hospital bed in before her so she could make a call outside his room. As she dialed her phone she realized that whether she was inside or outside the room wouldn't make much of a difference to Clint anymore, he couldn't hear what she had to say anyways.

"Coulson, I need medical transport back to base. Sooner rather than later, preferably." The anger had faded from her when she saw Clint, only to be replaced by her usual cold and clinical tone.

"Medical transport? He just woke up Romanoff."

"There have been some unexpected changes in his condition." She responded shortly.

"What kind of changes?" Coulson asked warily.

"Clint's deaf."

"What do you mean Clint's deaf?"

"I mean he can't fucking hear, Coulson."

"Yeah, I got that Romanoff, thanks for clearing that up. I mean how."

"Collapsed ear canal plus ruptured eardrum in both ears equals deafness. It's pretty simple really. Just get him home, I don't care how you do it." She abruptly hung up on him before he had a chance to respond and took a deep breath before pushing the hospital door open.

She walked in to find a frustrated nurse fussing over an even more frustrated Clint as she tried to hook him back into the various machines monitoring him and his IVs. For a largely incapacitated man, Clint sure was giving that poor nurse hell.

"I'll take it from here." Natasha intervened, taking the wire for heart monitor from her hands. The nurse sighed in relief, shooting Natasha an incredibly grateful look as she backed off to let Natasha in.

The moment the stepped in, placing her hand lightly on Clint's chest with her eyes locked onto his, he calmed down, surrendering himself to her as she worked diligently over him. There was a certain intensity to Natasha, in the way she became so absorbed in everything she did, in the way she moved, in her stern face as she concentrated on the task before her. Her cool, collected demeanor washed over Clint and he felt safe again.

When Natasha was done, the nurse checked over everything to make sure it was all correct, then, with murmur of approval, she left the room. The silence that settled was heavy and uneasy, the only noise was Clint's ragged breathing and the steady tempo of the heart monitor beeping quietly.

And it was strikingly weird, this silence. Neither of them were particularly chatty people, in fact, they spent most of their time together not talking. Natasha and Clint both had a deep and abiding appreciation to silence; they found it easy and comfortable. But there was some vague, intangible difference between elected silence and forced silence. In all likelihood, they wouldn't be talking now even if Clint could heat, but because he couldn't, and that option was taken away from them, it was so eerie, unsettling.

Natasha fixed her gaze downward to their hands, only looking up when she felt Clint slide his hand out from beneath hers. She looked up curiously, her head cocked slightly to one side as she watched Clint's hands. Her eyes sparked with recognition as she watching Clint's hands form all too familiar shapes and patterns.

"You sign, Natasha?" He asked without a word.

"Of course." She responded, her own hands moving rapidly, the feeling of the words on her hands just as fluid as when the words rolled off her tongue in a dozen different languages. Clint rolled at his eyes at her response, he should've know she'd know sign language, she knew practically everything else.

A dopey grin creased Clint's face as he looked up at Natasha, he felt much better knowing he could still talk to her even if, you know, he couldn't talk. It made him feel a lot less helpless.

"How'd you learn?" He asked.

"Just like I learned everything else." She shrugged, and he nodded stiffly. "How about you?"

"Circus." He signed back. "Let's just say it was a very unique lot of people I grew up around. So what's going to happen to me, Tasha?" He had been kept waiting around for hours with no help and no answers and was dying to know what was going on.

Natasha filled him in on everything that had happened since their communication lines had been cut after the building went under. Clint watched her hands intently as she tried to tell him everything as fast as she could, though he was a little rusty and had to tell her to slow down more than once.

"So I'm going back to base for treatment?" Clint asked as she was nearing the end of her story.

"Yeah, hopefully. I'm still waiting to hear back from Coulson." Both pairs of hands settled into their laps as Clint digested everything Natasha had just told him. What did she mean when the doctor said fixing him would be 'very difficult'? There had to be a fix, right? He didn't even want to think about the other possibility.

About three hours later Natasha's phone rang again. She answered without hesitation.

"Romanoff." She barked into the receiver.

"I got your medical transport. Fury doesn't like it, but we've got facilities here prepped for him. I had his medical files forwarded to Mccoy who sent them off to another doctor whom he thinks can help. We're flying him in now."

"Another doctor, why can't Mccoy do it?" She knew another random doctor who put Clint even more on edge. There was a slight rustling on the other end of the line and the voice that responded was none other than SHIELD's CMO.

"Because I'm a goddamn trauma surgeon, Agent Romanoff. And you must be out of your mind if you think transporting him trans-Atlantic not 24 hours after he's woken up from a coma with severed injuries is a good idea." The disapproval in his voice was more than she'd ever heard, and she'd been scolded an awful lot by him.

"Look, the longer Clint is subjected to constant medical supervision without his hearing the more wound up he's going to get. Clint's a bad enough patient with all his senses; you want to deal with him with the added pressure of having lost one of them? I don't think so. When's transport getting here?" There was some more rusting and her handler was back.

"They'll be there in an hour. See you both soon." The line went dead and Natasha turned to let Clint know they were almost home.

* * *

"How does it look, Doc?" Natasha bit her lip nervously, her arms crossed tightly across her chest as Mccoy finished up his examination. He hesitated before answering, which never meant anything good.

"It's bad, Romanoff. I'm not sure there is a fix to this." He saw Natasha's anger flare up and continued speaking before she had a chance to respond. "Let's wait to see what the other doctor had to say, he's the expert in this stuff, not me."

"When's he supposed to get here?" She snapped impatiently. It felt like all she'd done is wait for the past three weeks and she was sick of it.

"He just got in, Coulson's escorting him down now."

Natasha and Mccoy waited outside Clint's room for the doctor, he'd nodded off while they'd been talking and neither of them felt the need to wake him. Natasha had been pacing absent mindedly, not thinking about much of anything as they waited and she felt a calmness settle in her.

That calm was shattered as Coulson rounded the corner to the hallway with the new doctor in tow and she felt the blood drain from her face. When the doctor looked up from the files in his hands his eyes immediately locked onto hers, and time stopped as she was met by a pair of eyes all too familiar.

Natasha was snapped back into reality by the sound of Coulson's voice, ever calm and steady.

"Doctor, please put the gun down." Only then did Natasha realize that he'd drawn a weapon and had it leveled shakily at her. She should draw her own weapon, that's what she was trained to do, but she didn't. Instead, she lifted her hands in the universal gesture of surrender, though the good doctor could not be swayed.

"Put the gun down or I will call security." Coulson was still trying to reason with him, but Natasha knew it was pointless.

"No!" The doctor snapped back, his face reddening with rage. "She killed my daughter."


	7. Chapter 7

**Sorry this hasn't been as soon as I would've liked it to be. I had killer writer's block, then I had surgery, then I started school so I've been hella busy. But, let me know what you all think so I can figure out where to go from here. **

**Thanks!**

"She killed my daughter." The words seemed to echo through the hall as Coulson stopped in his tracks; Mccoy stepped away from her, subconsciously or not, Natasha couldn't tell.

"Dr. Drakov, so nice seeing you again." She sounded almost bored by the confrontation which only gave rise to the doctor's anger. He responded by firing two shots at Natasha, missing both, while she didn't so much as flinch. The doctor, however, ended up bleeding on the floor as a result of Coulson's swift action against him.

"Dr. Mccoy, please take Dr. Drakov here and get him started on Agent Barton. Agent Romanoff, with me." Coulson instructed curtly, shooting Natasha a pointed look before turning to leave. Of course, this meant that Natasha would have to walk straight past the good doctor, and she did so with her head held high and her signature air of cold confidence.

"Agent?" Drakov spat, trying to staunch the bleeding from his lower lip.

"SHIELD's finest, baby." Drakov felt like he'd been punched again by her words. After everything she'd done, she was not only alive and well, but thriving, and mocking him too. With a sickeningly sweet smile and a flip of her hair, she swept of view.

"How can you even stand her?" Drakov asked Mccoy as he reviewed Clint's medical files since his most recent bout of injuries.

"To tell you the truth, she's the worst patient I've ever had. She's distrustful by nature, anxious, violent even. She's a regular pain in my ass whenever she's in here."

"Then why do you-"

"Because she's good at what she does. The best even. And she's sacrificed a lot for us, and for him." Mccoy nodded in Clint's direction who was watching them intently, wishing desperately to know what they were talking about.

Clint was about ready to crawl out of his skin.

He couldn't focus, he couldn't sleep unless they doped him up, he couldn't stand the touch of another human being, especially the doctors. Everything just felt so disgustingly wrong. He felt trapped, unable to move from his bed, unable to speak rightly, unable to hear any and all decisions being made about him and for him, it was agonizing.

The only thing that made any of this bearable was Natasha. She was the veritable queen on calm and it seemed to radiate out of her, and if Natasha wasn't freaking out, why should he? Right? And she talked to him, well as best as they could in sign language. But, it wasn't the same, he missed her voice. Without it, it felt like a part of her was missing. Because her voice was so interesting, so unique, so her, and it was beautiful and he'd lost that part of her along with his hearing.

She'd left a while ago, shortly before this new doctor came, and she hadn't come back yet. And he could see the tension in this new doctor, he was angry and scared about something, and Clint couldn't figure out what or why and the only person who ever bothered to explain anything to him was MIA. He wanted to kill somebody.

Clint wasn't used to feeling so helpless. There was nothing he could do, only watch and wait. But, the only thing he could wait for, was her.

"Before you even ask," Natasha started as Coulson opened his mouth. "yes, I killed Dr. Drakov's daugher."

There was a long, uneasy silence that followed her admission. Coulson wasn't surprised, Natasha could see it, and she didn't know how to feel about that.

"What happened?" Coulson shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, Natasha remained as stoic as ever.

"It was a long time ago, Coulson, I'd rather not get into it."

"And I'd rather know why and how you know a SHIELD doctor from before your time here." He crossed his arms disapprovingly.

"And I'd rather know why the fuck you decided to hire an ex-Red Room doctor to work for SHIELD." Natasha snapped back at him.

"So you knew him, from before?" Coulson asked. Coulson, Fury, Bobbi, they all referred to her Red Room days as 'before'. Clint was the only one who didn't, he called it for what it was.

"More like knew of him."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, Coulson, I don't want to get into this with you. I don't want to talk about Drakov, or his work here. It's over, done with."

"You sound pretty angry, Natasha."

"There are very few people in this world I actively hate, Coulson. Don't give me that look. Hate means you care a whole awful lot about a person, and I don't really actually care about many people. If I have one great skill, Coulson, it's my shocking amount of apathy. I just don't give a fuck, about anything really, that's why I'm good at what I do. But, Drakov, that man, I hate him. I hate him more than I could ever articulate to you. And that should scare you Coulson, and it should make you wonder who exactly that man is."

"The same could be said of you, Natasha." Coulson did have a point, she did concede that. "You did kill the man's daughter."

"And doesn't that make you wonder, Coulson? Take everything you know about, everything that's in my file and take a good hard look at who I am. Would I kill a child?"

"I didn't think you ever would, ever could. That's part of the reason that we kept you."

"Then, why did I kill this one?"

"You must've had a reason. I won't say a good reason, but a reason nonetheless."

"What does that say about him?"

"What does it say about who you worked for?"

"The good doctor and I worked for the same people, boss. Or have you forgotten that? Or did you never bother to even ask him about that?"

"Natasha…"

"We're done here, Coulson." Natasha was hiding something, but he knew she'd never say, at least, not to him. He let her go, but she left him feeling uneasy. She was right about one thing, Natasha wasn't the kind to kill without reason, at least with a kid. There was more to Dr. Drakov than they'd been led to believe.

"Where have you been?" Clint asked Natasha when she finally came back, sitting down on the edge of the bed next him, ignoring Drakov as he worked just a few feet from them.

"Coulson and I had some things to talk about." It wasn't exactly a lie. They talked for a couple more minutes in silence until Natasha heard a cabinet slam behind them. Natasha turned to see Drakov, while Clint simply looked up at his partner. He saw, and felt, her entire body go rigid, Natasha was pissed.

"What's wrong?" He asked, but Natasha had already gotten up and walked over to the new doctor. She grabbed him roughly by the collar and there was a mixture of fear and loathing on his face as Natasha dragged him out of the room.

"You and I are going to have a little chat, Drakov." She growled as she threw him against the hallway wall.

"We don't have much to talk about, Irina. Though I'm beginning to think that's not your real name."

"We have plenty to talk about, darling." She sneered. "Natalya Romonova, at your service dear." There was a flash of fear in his eyes, and Natasha relished in it.

"If you think I'm going to help your partner you must be insane."

"I think that's exactly what you're going to do." Her voice was steady and firm but it did little and less to quell Drakov's anger.

"After what you did? You must be fucking insane!"

"Semyon-" Natasha started, but was cut off by another outburst.

"She trusted you!" He pushed Natasha hard, but not enough to break her stance. "She loved you! I love you." Natasha heard the pain in his voice and she couldn't even bring herself to feel sorry or ashamed. She only felt contempt for the man before her.

"You loved Irina, not me."

"She was innocent."

"As was I, once. Until them, until you. If it's a matter of who sinned first, I think we both know that it was never me."

The doctor remained silent, his anger slowly dissipating to be replaced by grief.

"I won't help you." He told her finally, only a meager hint of defiance in his voice.

"That's exactly what you're going to do, love."

"And what makes you so sure?"

"Because I know exactly what you've done. To me, to the rest, I know. But, SHIELD? They don't. And what do you think they'd do to you if they found out?"

"You wouldn't." He challenged.

"I think we both know that I would." Natasha's threats were never hollow, even this man who barely knew her could see that. Feeling resigned to his fate, Drakov stepped slowly past Natasha, pushing the medical door open once more, hesitating before crossing the threshold.

"Do you regret it?" Natasha bit her bottom lip in contemplation, a moment later she spoke.

"Did it hurt?" She asked, and she didn't need a response to know his answer, she could see it in his face: It hurt and it still hurt for him.

"Yes." He said simply.

"Then, no." She responded flatly.

"Natasha, what's going on? Who is that man?" Natasha could see how anxious Clint was and she knew that she wasn't helping any right now. But, at the same time, she didn't really want to tell him either. She didn't think it would help much knowing who the new doctor was, and knowing who he was to Natasha.

"Everything's fine, Clint. He's a new doctor, a specialist, and trust me, he'll help."

"Nat, tell me the truth. All of it." He could see right through her, she hated it.

"Please, just trust me on this." Clint narrowed his eyes at her, but nodded once curtly, not having much of a choice in the matter.

It took three weeks for Drakov to come up with a viable solution, and those three weeks felt more like three months. By that time, the majority of Clint's injuries had healed and he was up and walking again and they told him he could go home. Natasha stayed with him most of the time because the doctors wanted to keep an eye on him, and because Clint needed her. He was restless and angry and the smallest of things would set him off and Natasha seemed to have the perfect combination of forcefulness and gentleness to keep him in check.

It was a highly experimental procedure that both Mccoy and Drakov had explained to her multiple times, but she still didn't really understand what it was. She only knew that there was a chance, a small chance, but a chance nonetheless, that it would restore Clint's hearing. He went into surgery 4 hours ago, and he was just coming out now, much to Natasha's relief.

"How'd it go, Doc?" She asked Mccoy, he only shrugged.

"We won't know 'till he wakes up, Romanoff."

Well, right there was another two hours of waiting and Mccoy knew her well enough to let her alone while she waited.

"Clint?" She asked as he began to wake up though she knew the fog of the anesthesia would take a bit to wear off. "C'mon Wonderboy." She whispered almost like a prayer when Clint groaned

"T-tasha?" He mumbled in response, rolling his head in the direction of her voice and Natasha breathed a huge sigh of relief. She felt the last bit of tension in her release as she rested her forehead against Clint's chest and a dopey grin creased his face.

"I can't believe this worked." Natasha shook her head in amazement.

"You sound fucking incredible, Natasha." Clint didn't think he'd heard anything more beautiful in his life that her voice in that moment. It was Natasha's voice, a smokey, heady voice that was a weapon as much as the rest of her. A voice that could build you up as easily as it could drop you to your knees and it sounded, to Clint, like safety, like home.

"Fuck!" Clint woke up in a start, his breathing shallow and labored and covered in a cold sweat. He ran a hand through his hair to try and calm himself down and yanked his shirt off over his head.

He'd regained his hearing in his life, but his deafness still haunted him in his dreams. And it was the same every night. He'd be on a mission with Natasha, that part always changed, but the end was always the same. He'd go from being perfectly fine one minute, to completely deaf the next and because of it, in the ends, Natasha would always end up dead.

"Natasha!" Clint could never truly feel at ease until he heard her voice.

"Hey, Clint." She sounded tired, and rightfully so, he glanced at the clock and saw that is was just past three. He clutched his phone like a lifeline, only lessening his grip when he heard her voice. "I'm fine, I promise."

Clint thought it was kind of sad that this routine had become so predictable.

"Nat, I'm sorry. About all of this."

"Don't be, Clint. It's okay." If anyone understood what Clint was going through, it was Natasha. And for that, he was immeasurably grateful.

"Thanks, Nat." He hung up his phone reluctantly and got up out of bed. He half stumbled to his kitchen and downed a glass of water, knowing he wasn't going to sleep again. He walked over to a window and threw it open, focusing on the noise below, the never ending noise that was New York City. He became so absorbed in the ambient city noise that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a knock on the door.

"What are you doing here, Nat?"

"I had to talk to you." She seemed nervous, which, in turn, made Clint uneasy himself.

"Come on in." He waved her inside, gently shutting the door after her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just thought you could use the company."

"Liar." Clint teased, pulling playfully on the hem of her t-shirt.

"I got a new op." She sighed, collapsing onto his couch.

"Solo?" Clint tried to mask the disappointment in his voice as he sat beside her, the both of them leaning into each other, but he knew Natasha could hear it anyway.

"Yeah, and it's important too."

"But?"

"I can't stand the work." She muttered not meeting his eyes.

"Nat, you don't have to-" Clint began, knowing full well what she meant.

"Yeah, Clint, I do." Clint stood up abruptly and Natasha almost fell over.

"Natasha, don't do this. Please, don't do this to yourself." Clint knew Natasha had the tendency to be self-destructive, but in the past he'd always been there to stop her from going too far over the edge. If she left tomorrow, without anyone there to stop her, who knows how far she'd go.

"I'll be fine, Clint." She promised, standing up and placing her hands on his forearms. "Will you just shut up? I'm not finished."

"What's wrong, Nat?" Clint asked when she didn't say anything.

"You almost died, Clint! And I wasn't there and I couldn't help, that's what's wrong." Natasha had tightened her grip on his forearms until it hurt her fingers but she wouldn't, couldn't, let go.

"And you're afraid that something is going to happen to me when you're not here again." He sighed, resting his forehead against hers.

"Yeah, how did you-?"

"Why do you think I'm afraid to let you go?" Natasha had more to say, but even with her talents, she felt that nothing she could say would be right.


	8. Chapter 8

**This chapter is a little on the M Rated dies, so read at your own risk. I don't think it's too bad, but just in case. Anyways, I hope you enjoy and review!**

"I need a drink." Natasha stuttered out, taking a step back from her partner, her eyes downcast. She hated this. Natasha was never any good at feelings, especially expressing feelings, and they made her feel weak, vulnerable. She wasn't even supposed to feel, she was supposed to be cold like she'd been trained to be, it made her work easier if she didn't acknowledge her emotions or let anything come of them and she'd gotten really good at doing just that. However, with Clint, it was hard to compartmentalize. It's like all the emotions she was supposed to feel had been shuttered behind a wall, beaten back over the years, and Clint had broken the dam, letting a lifetimes worth of feelings unload onto him.

"What do you want?" Clint's words broke through her thoughts, snapping her out of her own muddled musings.

"Anything. Something strong." She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. She was going to need a drink, or four maybe, before she was ready to deal with any of this. If she dealt with any of this.

A few minutes later Natasha found herself seated on top of one of Clint's marble counters with a bracing Manhattan in her hand. The ice clinked softly as she swirled the glass in her hand absently before she took a sip that emptied half the glass. Clint raised an eyebrow questioningly at her and Natasha, in her typical fashion, shrugged it off with another drink.

The silence that hung between them wasn't exactly awkward, but it was thick, full of unspoken words clinging desperately to tongues trying to work up the courage to break free. After finishing her drink, she absently moved to Clint's who'd left his own dormant on the counter next to her as he leaned against the opposite counter, and he let her, not missing how tightly she gripped the glass or how taunt her jaw was. He thought about how last week when he couldn't sleep she'd spent 3 hours reading to him just so he could listen to her voice. It was some book she'd been in the middle of about bioengineering and biotechnology; he fell asleep with his head in her lap.

"Okay, Nat." He spoke up when she'd slowed her rate of consumption considerably, it was more or less normal now that she was on drink two. "You've got to say something, this is killing me."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to say." She shrugged.

"It's not about what you're supposed to say, just say what you want to say."

"Well, something's up with you too. Why don't you just say what you want to say?" She countered defensively, wishing she'd just stayed home tonight.

"Because you're not going to like what I have to say." Now it was his turn to shrug.

"How do you know, you haven't said it?" Clint pushed off his counter and walked over to her, standing between her legs that dangled towards the floor, her legs not quite long enough to let her feet touch the floor. She felt her lungs constrict with the sudden proximity, questioning whether it was a good idea to challenge him.

"Because I know you, Nat." He rested his hands on her hips and Natasha set the half-full glass down, their arms brushing lightly against each other as she did so.

"Am I really that transparent?" She feigned offendedness, inciting an amused smirk from Clint, this felt more comfortable, more natural for them.

"Nah, you're good. I'm just better."

"Is that so?" She scoffed, giving him a gentle nudge. "You're sounding awfully confident for a guy who gets his ass regularly handed to him by a girl."

"Well, can you blame me? She's a very attractive girl after all."

"You really think I'm pretty?" She gave her hair a dramatic toss over her shoulder and batted her long eyelashes at him, her emerald eyes sparkled with amusement.

"I think you're beautiful, Natasha." His playful tone dissipated and Natasha's smile faded as the seriousness set it again.

"Clint, don't." Natasha said, shaking her head.

"Don't what Natasha? Say that I think you're beautiful? Say that I care about you? That I -" Clint stopped abruptly and sighed, letting his head fall forward in frustration.

"That you what, Clint?" He heard the ice edging its way her voice, the cold that was designed to keep even him out of her heart.

"That I don't know where we stand. I don't know what I even mean to you, Natasha, if anything." Natasha and Clint were both taken aback by his words, as if even he hadn't known what he really wanted to say.

"Do you actually think so little of me that you could mean nothing to me?" Natasha made to push him away, his closeness now only provoking her anger, but he snatched her wrist and stilled her attempts to get up.

"No." His voice was softer, the anger replaced with something that sounded like defeat. "I'm sorry, Tasha. I didn't mean to snap at you, I'm just frustrated."

"By me?"

"Among other things, yes." Truer words were never spoken between them but in the hours before dawn.

"I'm sorry I'm not easy, Clint." She relaxed and so did Clint, her hand falling from his clumsily back into her lap.

"I can't imagine that I am any better." He said with a bitter smile. "We're quite a pair, you and me." Natasha laughed and threaded her fingers through his.

"You're frustrating and confusing," Clint continued. "and you always know how to rub me the wrong way." Natasha looked irritated with him. "But, I've known that since the day I met you."

Natasha arched her back to bring her lips to his, feeling him smile against her lips. His hands slipped to her waist and pulled her to the edge of the counter, the suddenness of it causing her let out a sharp huff of breath as her hips met his. Natasha wrapped her arms around Clint's neck and kissed him once more, pulling him even closer against her. She felt so small with him looming above her, his broad chest enveloped her much smaller frame and his whipcord arms, muscled from decades of archey, could wrap around her with room to spare. Her hands buried themselves in his short, blond hair as his roamed absently across her back; the line he traced down her spine made her shudder in his arms and he smiled against her once more.

"I'm sorry." Natasha murmured, gently letting her hands fall from him back to her side as Clint let his hands come to rest on the counter on either side of her. They both sighed as Clint knocked his forehead gently against hers. "I'm so sorry, Clint. I swear, it's not you." She continued to apologize. Clint chucked and Natasha reared her head in confusion.

"What's so funny?" Clint could see the hurt in her eyes and quickly backpedaled.

"Now, I'm sorry. It's just that you don't often apologize to me, for anything. You once stabbed me in the forearm and said, if I'm not mistaken, 'you know you shouldn't sneak up on me'. And you're apologizing to me now for something you should never have to apologize for. I know this isn't about me, I just don't know what it is about." He explained, brushing a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. He was met with silence.

"You hate having sex, don't you?" There was no accusation, no judgement in his voice, just the same curiosity that was always there when they talked about her. There would always be secrets between them, things unsaid, but Clint tried to limit them wherever possible.

"Sex was never anything but a weapon. A weapon for me to use and to be used against me even when I thought it wasn't." Her bluntness took him aback, he had expected her to retreat back into herself, as she so often did, in lieu of opening up to him. "Every kiss is meant to kill, even with you. Every touch feels like a gun to the head, even from you."

"Natasha, I'm not James." She flinched at the name only rarely passed between them, a secret left untouched, another story yet untold. He only knew the bits and pieces, only snippets of their history and even he saw that it was a dark one.

"I know, but -"

"But, do you trust me, Nat?" He took her face in both his hands, forcing her to look up at him.

"More than I trust myself sometimes."

"Then trust that I'm not holding a gun to your head. Now now, not ever."

"Why do you want this so bad, Clint." She was confused, and why shouldn't she be? No one ever wanted her, not really, not when they knew who she really was. Even James never truly knew her, never wanted to either.

"Because I want to be with you, all of you Natasha, in every way. I don't want something in between us always keeping us away from each other, holding us back from something I know we both want. I don't want you to have to live your life afraid of me and of yourself; fear isn't freedom, Natasha."

"It's not just my past that scares me, it's our future. Where does it leave us, what does it mean?" She pushed off the counter and past him, unable to bear his intensity so close to her, her bare feet barely making a sound as she walked away from him. She stood with her back against him, hands gripping the opposite counter hard enough for her knuckles to turn white, her mind whirring at a million miles an hour.

"It means whatever you want it to mean; let it mean nothing."

"You want to have meaningless sex with me?" Natasha scoffed. Clint walked up behind her, placing his hands over hers, and kissed her bare shoulder where the fabric of her t-shirt slouched off.

"I want to have very meaningful sex with you, Natahsa. It's you who's asking all the questions." He brushed his fingertips ever so lightly along her arms, brushing her hair back behind her shoulders as he worked his was slowly down her ribcage, down her sides, all the while whispering in her ear. "I want you to let go of all your walls, all your pretenses, and see your mind and your heart as naked as I've seen your body. I want to give myself to you to trust you and show you that I do. I want you trust me, with more than your life because I know you already do, I want you to trust me with your heart. And I want to make you happy, Natahsa, to make you shake, shudder and scream, to make you flushed and breathless and maybe even a little bit careless." He kissed her gently, just behind the ear. Natasha's resolve broke.

Suddenly, it seemed, it was no longer Natasha's back he was faced with and he was locked in a searing kiss; Natasha stretched up onto her tip toes, deepening the kiss with both of her hands clutching tightly to the hem of his thin cotton shirt and she'd pushed him back against the cabinets. Once she wanted nothing to do with him, now it felt like she couldn't get enough of him, like she had a thirst only he could quench. And Clint, he was lost in Natasha, in her fire. She made short work of his shirt, breaking their kiss only for the moment it took to pull the offending fabric over his head before being swept away by him again. But when she went to kiss him again she felt a sharp tug on her hair, forcing her head back, her breath hitched when he began to kiss his way down from her jaw to her collarbone as one hand slipped under her shirt.

Clint swiftly reversed their positions, all but ripping Natasha's shirt off in his haste. Their hands were everywhere, roaming over territory that had yet been only seen, never explored. In one swift move, Clint had her bra on the floor joining the other puddles of fabric. Natasha's knees went weak as he massaged and teased her breasts, relishing in every ragged breath and sigh that escaped her lips.

"Bed. Now." She stammered out and before another word could be said she was lifted off her feet, instinctively wrapping her legs tightly around his waist, grinding his own arousal up against hers jarringly. Clint's jaw visibly clenched and so did his grip on Natasha's slender waist as he tumbled back onto the bed with Natasha on top of him. Her hands slowly traced the defined muscles of his chest and stomach as she kissed his exposed skin, her mouth covering every one of his jagged scars. He saw he hesitate on a scar placed squarely on his hip, exposed when the elastic of his sweatpants slipped down and guided her face up back to his to reclaim her lips once more.

Clint had Natahsa under him once more and wasted no time in kissing every inch of exposed skin. Natasha, unlike him, had very few scars, he instead committed to memory every part of every tattoo he could see. His fingers traced the colorful swirls and the delicate black lines as his mouth lavished at her breasts. Her quiet moans turned into a sharp gasp as Clint slid a hand down the waistband of her pants, pressing at the wetness pooling between her legs. Natasha turned her face away from him as he thumbed her clit, causing a wave of pleasure to course through her. Clint brough his hand back up to her waist and, with his other, gently guided her face back towards his. Her green eyes locked on his grey eyes, both nearly black with desire, and in his she saw concern.

"Are you okay, Natasha?" He breathed against her lips.

"I'm perfect." She smiled, guiding his hands back down to her hips. Soon, Natasha's pants had been discarded as well, leaving her in nothing but a pair of back, lacy panties. Clint placed a kiss on her stomach and trailed them down her hips, her thighs, and now, her inner thighs. Natasha squirmed as Clint denied her the release she so desperately craved.

"You fucking tease." Natasha hissed as he snapped the elastic with his teeth, his hands keeping her hips firmly in place of the bed and nudging her legs open wider little by little.

"Well, I learned from the best." He smirked, kissing her through the thin fabric. Without anymore hesitation, he slipped her panties off in one smooth move and planted his mouth on her clit. Natasha whimpered as his tongue laved at her sensitive folds, both hands clutching tightly to the sheet to keep a grip on herself. When she felt a calloused finger pressed against her she slid her legs open even wider as he pushed into her, feeling her tense reflexively, them relax into him. As Natasha lost herself in the feel of him, the warmth of his tongue, the roughness of his hand working in and out of her, he lost himself in the taste of, relishing in it as she writhed beneath him. Natasha felt the heat pooling deep within her and before long she felt that energy release, searing through her like an electric shock as she came, exhaling a deep breath she hadn't realized that she was holding.

Natasha grabbed him by the arm and brought him back up to her, tasting herself on his lips as they kissed. Somewhere along the way Clint had rid himself of the rest of his clothes and now entangled himself with Natasha, waiting for her to make the next move.

"I need you, Clint." She whispered against him as his erection brushed her clit. Natasha had never felt so much desire, so much need before in her life. She needed him in this moment as she needed oxygen and she felt like she was suffocating. Wrapping her legs around his waist she arched her hips up to meet his, he entered her in one quick motion, causing the both of them to nearly choke at the sudden sensation, their mouths never leaving one another. Clint stilled, allowing them both to adjust to one another. Natasha couldn't bare the stillness anymore and began to move her hips, and God, it felt incredible to have him inside her. It wasn't long before they were both tumbling over the edge together, each with a cry of the others name fresh off their lips.

Clint placed a chaste kiss on Natasha's lips as they curled up next to each other, both breathing raggedly.

"Thank you." Natasha breathed, dropping her head onto Clint's chest.

"For what?"

"For everything." She kissed his chest and pulled a blanket up over the both of them, letting sleep take her in a matter of minutes.

When Clint was sure she was asleep, he smoothed back the flyaway hairs and kissed the crown of her head. Inhaling deeply he tightened his grip around her gently.

"I love you, Natasha." He whispered before letting sleep take him as well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Apologies to all of you lovelies! I've been hell busy this year with school and work and applying for colleges, I haven't had some time to sit down and rally write for a while. But, I made a Thanksgiving resolution to try really hard to get updates to you every two weeks going forward. **

**Thank you for being really patient and I hope you enjoy!**

**Pretty please with a cherry on top review so I know how I'm doing!**

Only the sound of heavy, sleep-filled breaths greeted Natasha in the pitch-black of the room. The digital clock on the table beside her read 2:32 am, she had hours still before he would wake up, though she'd be gone long before the first rays of dawn hit the horizon. Slowly, she extricated herself from him and the tangle of sheets; he stirred slightly at her movements but remained fast asleep. The guard shift changed at three and she would use that time to slip out unnoticed. Sleepily she swung her legs over the side of her bed and sat up, clutching a sheet to her chest. As she gathered her clothes and dressed, her mind wandered to a few nights ago when she'd woken up next to Clint with the warm late-morning sun shining through the windows.

She'd woken up before Clint and, at first, she couldn't remember why she was naked when the previous night's events came flooding back to her and she sat up, trading the warmth of his chest against her back for the cool breeze drifting in. She'd expected to feel different than she did. She expected to feel the regret and disgust that always followed any sexual encounter. But, she didn't. She felt content, almost happy to be waking up next to her partner. Natasha gathered her undoubtedly messy hair to one side as she replayed last night in her mind; she kept thinking that feeling this good wasn't possible, kept expecting herself to misremember what had happened.

"Hey." Clint's groggy voice broke through her thoughts.

"Hey." Natasha responded, somewhat despondently, turning her head to face him. She smiled at the dopey grin on his face, then her smile faded. There was something in his eyes, beyond the tiredness, something she couldn't quite place.

"What's wrong?" He asked, concern replacing his clouded eyes.

"Nothing." She turned her head back away from him and he, in response, sat up and placed a hand on her exposed waist.

"Nat, really." He insisted and Clint's stomach was in knots. What if he pushed her too hard too fast? What if she really wasn't for this and he'd just made a terrible mistake?

"Really, I'm fine. I'm good actually, really good." She told him, shifting slightly, expecting to be sore and finding herself in perfect health. She smiled when Clint breathed out a sigh of relief. He brushed a thumb over the back of her neck, over her Red Room serial number, before placing his lips gently over the number that, to most, marked her as a monster.

"You're sure, Nat?" He asked, his voice shaking uncharacteristically.

"Yes, I'm sure. Since when are you so damn insecure?" She asked, half-jokingly, turning her torso to face him entirely.

"I was just worried I'd made a mistake with you." He shrugged, but she could see there was more.

"And?" She prompted.

"I don't know. It's just that you're only 24 and I'm nearly 40, Nat. There are some many other men, so much better and so nearer your age, I sometimes wonder why you're here with me." Natasha really didn't know how to respond, she'd always had so many problems that she could forget that Clint had his own. Truth be told, she'd forgotten about how big their age gap was, he'd never seemed older than her, in their personal life or in the field.

"Bobbi is a much better woman than me, so why am I in your bed?" Natasha countered.

"Nat, you know that's not the same."

"Hey." She stopped him from continuing, taking his face in her hands. "There may be better men, but not better for me, Clint. After everything we've been through, after everything you've done for me, you think I'm just going to ditch you? Stop worrying, enjoy the moment." She kissed him to help further ease his mind.

"When did you become the expert on enjoying anything?" Clint teased, playing with a wayward piece of hair.

"Since always. I enjoy many things."

"Are you sure about that?" Clint seemed skeptical, squinting his eyes at her.

"Well, I've always enjoyed art theft, though the occasions for me to do so are few and far between." She told him casually, as if to say she enjoyed long walks on the beach or scrapbooking.

"You really are a jack of all trades, aren't you?" Natasha shrugged, throwing the covers off her and sliding off the bed and landing lightly on her feet.

"Off so soon?" Clint asked, following her lead to the kitchen, gathering her clothes as she went.

"I've got an op." He'd forgotten she was being sent off without him; he sighed, hating his still healing injuries and pending psych evaluation. Clint kept reminding himself that this was just part of the job, he got injured all the time, and that Natasha had weathered far worse, but it brought him little comfort now as Natasha was getting ready to go off.

"SHIELD can't know about this, Clint." There was a hint of resignation in her declaration, but not enough to be worth reading into, she was, as always, simply thinking logically and defensively.

"Coulson would have our heads." Clint agreed, somewhat reluctantly, frustrated that they'd have to hide in order to be together. Even from Clint's oldest friend. He'd started brewing coffee when Natasha swept off to the bathroom to double check her presentability; washing her face and smoothing her hair back to turn the knotted mess into something manageable, Natasha left no trace of last nights events on her to be seen.

This was normally the part where regret and shame seeped its way into her, settling in her bones as she desperately removed all traces from her skin. She'd wash away any remnants of being touched in scalding water that made her grit her teeth and turned her skin an angry pink as it burned, when she felt clean, or cleaner, she'd step out and examine the damage done to her. If she was lucky she'd be left with a few hickeys, but more often than not, she'd be left sore and bruised from particularly violent patrons who thought of her more as a toy than a human being. And she'd stare at herself in the mirror, her body marred in varying shades of purple, her scalp tender and achey, and she'd tell herself she wouldn't do this to herself again, she wouldn't carelessly cast off her dignity and her pride with her clothes, but those words were hollow, even to her own ears. She knew she would, she'd do it as flawlessly as she had before, and she would wake in the morning with more self-hatred than when she'd fallen asleep.

This morning wasn't normal, though. When she walked, she walked with ease, with no stiffness, soreness, rawness and with no dull ache in her entire body. She felt relaxed and rested, and the water felt amazing on her skin. She looked over her body, shedding her clothes again; she found her skin smooth and clean, the only discoloring on her skin was from her tattoos, all was right. Natasha pulled her clothes back on and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to remember everything from the night before, every touch, every sensation, every emotion. She didn't want to forget what it felt like to feel good.

A knock at the door snapped her out of her thoughts. How long had she been in here?

"I've got coffee, Nat." Clint called, she thought she heard uncertainty in his voice, but maybe she was just paranoid. She took a deep breath and opened the door. She wrapped her arms around Clint, kissing him forcefully but sweetly, sighing into him when his hands wound around her waist and in her hair, his fingers gently massaging her scalp. Clint was surprised by her enthusiastic display of affection, but god how she felt good.

Natasha's mind was a minefield, her heart sharp and hardened by years of bitterness, hatred and regret; she had a rough personality, like sandpaper or barbed wire. She was harsh, blunt, and volatile. Feelings seemed to matter little and less to her, she kept her distance from everybody, even from those who ardently cared for her. While she kept up her appearances of being made of ice, Natasha was all fire. She was still human beneath all her pretenses, she felt emotions deeply and fully, more so than most, and while she often chose to ignore them, she couldn't fight herself forever. Something had to give.

Likely, to most, bedding Natasha would've felt like a conquest. But, Clint couldn't see her as just an object, he knew her too well, loved her too much to demean her or her actions. Natasha had let him into her life, into her home, and reluctantly, into her heart and he felt nothing but gratitude for the trust she had placed in him.

His lungs ached, hers did too, when they pulled away, faces flushed, chests heaving. But, Natasha smiled, and it was a smile so genuine and so rare that he forgot about the pain in his chest. _He smiles like a little boy_, Natasha thought, looking up into his eyes. When Clint smiled, a real smile, his whole face lit up like a child's despite the wrinkles beginning to crease his weathered skin.

"Any regrets?" Clint asked, tucking a fallen strand of hair back.

"Can't say any come to mind at this juncture," her eyebrows knit together in mock concentration. "I'll have to get back to you."

"You suck." He rolled his eyes at her playfulness.

"Last time I checked, that was more your thing." She shot back with a smirk. Clint's eyes widened in surprise at Natasha's jab.

"Well, I didn't exactly hear any complaints last night." His tone was joking, but challenging. Like he was daring her to back down, testing to see how their relationship had changed.

"Nor will you in the future." She sauntered past him, her fingers brushing his side lightly as she passed. Clint's heart nearly leaped out of his chest at her words. He snatched her waist and turned her back to face him, kissing her again.

"Future?" He asked when they broke apart again.

"Seems I can't shake you after all." Her playful tone was gone, she knew it had to be for him to believe her that she wouldn't shut him out again now that she'd let him in. He smiled that little boy smile and all doubts Natasha had evaporated. At least, for the moment.

While Natasha waited in the dark for three to roll around, she made herself busy. Once dressed, she padded lightly around the room, her footfalls softer than a whisper against the smooth floors, until she found his computer. She wasn't really after this man, it was his father she was here to kill, but she had time and a little information never hurt anybody. Except, of course, that information was one of Natasha's greatest weapons. Quickly she bypassed the firewall, having brushed up on her hacking just a few weeks prior. She had a flashdrive hidden inside the hem of her skirt, she used it to install a virus she'd cooked up a few years back, it was hard to detect because it didn't really cause any havoc within the machine, it just gave her remote access to his harddrive, and by extension, his father's whole network. People often just copied harddrives to examine later, but Natasha never saw the point in that. Information changed all the time, and the only thing worse than no intel was old intel.

She'd finished just in time, the shift was about to change. Hearing the heavy footfalls of bored and tired guards receding, Natasha eased open the old door slowly to keep the hinges from creaking too loudly. Unnoticed she slipped out of the room and down the hall, grateful the ornate interior architecture cast more shadows than there was light to hide her as the new guards approached. She needed to make it to his room before they did or she was toast, Natasha quickened her pace, slinking in the shadows.

The guards approached the top of the stairs as Natasha reached the door, and she scraped by unnoticed in the nick of time. Exhaling in relief ever so quietly, Natasha focused on the task at hand. She stalks to the man lying asleep on the oversized bed in the middle of the room and, with one clean motion, slits the man's throat, ear to ear, without so much as a second thought. She wipes the blade clean on the stark white sheets as the blood bubbles and gurgles from the man, his struggles are weak and his eyes are a mixture of shock and fear as he looks up at her, her face is blank, emotionless.

"It's nothing personal." She says with a shrug, knowing it's no consolation as she slips the knife back into it's sheath hidden beneath her skirt. She vanishes then, out the window and over the wall. Having used her computer access to disable the alarms, she is a ghost, disappearing effortlessly into the shroud of night as if she had never been there.

In the morning, he wakes to find an empty bed and and a dead father.

She wakes up in New York, in the comfort of her own bed, feeling exhausted. She'd gone by train and car for about 5 hours so she could get home that night. In retrospect, she wasn't needed back that soon, she could've slept on the way, returned this morning rested, but there was something about sleeping in her own bed that she loved. Perhaps because she'd never actually owned a bed before coming here.

Her SHIELD phone rings as she downs a glass of slightly metallic water from her tap, Coulson's timing couldn't have sucked more. She all but slams the glass down onto the counter and snatches her phone.

"Romanoff." She barks into the receiver a bit more aggressive than necessary, but she was too tired to care.

"You and Barton need to report to base in an hour for briefing." Coulson ignored her callous tone, if he noticed it at all, and was strictly business.

"I'll be there." She hung up and texted Clint.

**-Got back in last night. Want to grab breakfast before briefing?**

A few minutes later, Clint responded.

**-Why didn't you call me when you got in? I'll pick you up in 15.**

**-It was late. Bring coffee. **

**-Will do. **

Natasha quickly rinsed off, brushed her teeth and put on a fresh pair of clothes, not really paying attention to what she was wearing. She slipped into a pair of flats just as Clint knocked on her door.

"The target's name is Numair Moradi, he's been a tricky one to catch. He's part of a terrorist cell moving weapons and drugs through Uzbekistan. About six years ago he worked as an informant to the US Army, when he double crossed the US by disguising bomb as information to help the Army bring down the cell, 12 soldiers died. He is one of SHIELD's top priorities. We don't know where he is, but we know where one of his money managers is, Motya Pipov."

"Follow, Motya, find Moradi. Sounds simple enough." Natasha muttered, flipping through her pile. "You know, if he's working with Motya, he's working with the Red Room." Both men in the room cocked their heads in confusion.

"Motya managed money for some sections of the Red Room, I never met him, so should be no problems there. I didn't know him, just knew of him."

"What does this mean for you?" Coulson asked.

"Means I'm about to royally piss off some of my fellow countrymen." Natasha responded coolly. "The real question you should be asking is what does the Red Room gain by funding a terrorist cell in Uzbekistan? I'd get on that right stat." Her phone, her personal phone, buzzed in her pocket mid-sentence and now she answered.

"Hey, gimme a minute." She grabbed her file off the desk. "See you in an hour." She returned to her call. "I'm a fucking artist, yeah. Told you I wouldn't fuck this one up." The door shut behind her, cutting off Coulson and Clint from the conversation.

"Do you know what that was about?" Coulson asked, Clint shrugged.

"No idea." He was a little thrown off by Natasha this past week. She was confusing more than anything, sleeping with him one night, gone the next without a work for a week. She didn't call when she got back either, which she normally did. Not even a text. Now there's mystery phone call because people like Clint and Natasha really didn't get random phone calls from friends or neighbors. Coulson was in the middle of saying something, Clint interrupted.

"Natasha just got back from a mission last night, it's not like you to have us on such a quick turn around." Coulson looked confused.

"If Natasha was on a mission last night, it didn't come from me. But we need you two on that plane ASAP, our window to strike is short. But, Clint-"

"Yeah?"

"Watch her on this." Clint nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. Natasha's past always had a habit of showing up unannounced and leaving Natasha devastated in its wake, the repercussions for her involvement were massive, they both knew, but she was stubborn, and determined and prone to getting herself into bad spots, more than he was. Clint left and found Natasha leaned against the wall just outside the equipment room, still on the phone.

"Just have something lined up when I get back, shouldn't be more than five days, if all goes well, I gotta run." She hung up and turned her attention to Clint.

"Please dear God do not lecture me on how this is risky or how I need to keep lid on things or some other bullshit because I never even met this guy." Natasha was not in the mood to have anyone doubting her today.

"Nah, I'll do all that later. Who was that on the phone?" Clint's curiosity always got the better of him.

"Just an old friend who owes me a favor." She shrugged him off innocently as if it wasn't weird, and he let it go too, for now at least.

17 hours later, Natasha and Clint stepped off the plane in Tashkent. It was warm for November, in the mid-sixties, and both were overdressed, but it mattered little.

"Motya will be in the bar tonight after a phone meeting with Moradi, the intel appears good. I did all my fact checking on the plane. I can keep him distracted if you can get up to his rooms and find out where the face to face is going to go down. We won't be able to get anywhere near him because of security, so we'll have to go long distance. I hope you brought the right hardware because arrows won't do." Natasha rambled as Clint drove through the crowded streets to the hotel.

"Why not?" He hated when he didn't get to use his bow, not that he wasn't just as skilled with a sniper, he just liked his bow better.

"It's too distinct, they'll know it was us the second it happens and I want at least a little head start before they put two and two together." Clint shrugged, it made sense, and if it would make her feel better, of course he was going to use it.

"I didn't bring anything suitable with me, but I've got a contact here that I can see before tonight."

"You know an arms dealer in Tashkent?" Natasha was surprised, she didn't even have connections in this neck of the woods, despite the strong Russian presence, or maybe because of the Russian connection.

"I spent some time here at the beginning of my SHIELD career, I've got a few friends." He responded nonchalantly.

"Well, then let's get this ball rolling." Natasha quipped as they pulled up to the hotel, the familiar rush that came with the excitement of a new mission coursed through them as they both geared up for another good run.


	10. Chapter 10

**I got this done waaayy sooner than I expected! **

**Please review!**

It was late in the day, Motya would be out in the open, and soon. For a Red Room employee, the guy was pretty sloppy, it was no wonder they were chock full of intel on him. Prone to booze and whores, Motya had more leaks than BP and they'd be easy to exploit.

Clint came back from meeting with his contact to find Natasha's beautiful red hair dyed a dark brown.

"I'm gone for three hours and I come back to find you making drastic life changes." Clint teased, tossing a dye stained towel off the bed.

"It's just hair. It grows back and I can always dye it again." She shrugged, she'd changed her hair more times than she could count, but the changes were fewer and farther between since joining SHIELD. They were also less drastic, but this was about risk assessment and elimination, and she would sacrifice her hair for her life any day.

"I like it, but I think I prefer your natural hair." He commented, pulling a luggage cart into the room behind him stacked high with bags.

"So do I, but it had to go. No, I never met Motya, but it's no secret that the Black Widow's a redhead." She sat on the bed, finishing toweling off her hair as Clint unloaded the bags, revealing a large, military grade case hidden among them. He slid the case off the cart and under the bed, Natasha raised an eyebrow, wondering what he'd gotten. He took the case back out and opened it for her to see.

"M39 EMR, clean. Bullets too, should do nicely for the job, but my options were pretty limited on a rush order."

"Suppressor?"

"No."

"Keep the range, smart. But, you still need to be within 750m for the shot, right?" Clint scoffed.

"800. 810 even."

"I stand corrected." She held up her hands defensively, Clint was always touchy if you shorted him his yardage. Hell, if Natasha could shoot like that she'd probably be the same way. He laughed as he slid the case back under the bed.

"You ready for tonight?" He asked. Natasha shrugged, going through her bag and pulling out two different dresses.

"I won't doubt you if you won't doubt me. Now, this is important. Black or gold?" She held up both options.

"Black." Clint choose.

"You sure? The gold would make me look a little more respectable, don't you think?"

"I think that he likely won't care about respectability. Plus, gold's too flashy, everybody will notice you, not just your mark."

"And you think the swath of my exposed back isn't noticeable?" A large portion of the back of the black dress was cut out from the bottom of her shoulder blades all the way to her lower back.

"I think you're noteworthy in sweatpants and a t-shirt, so I'm not really the expert here." He shrugged.

"You're useless." She threw both dresses down on the bed and left to go dry her hair, Clint chuckled.

An hour later night was falling and Natasha sauntered through the hotel bar, chatting animatedly in Russian on her phone to nobody. She spotted her target the second she stepped through the threshold and made her route to the bar cross paths with where he was seated.

Motya was a short man with a barrel chest and jet black hair slicked back with too much get. He wore his collared shirt unbuttoned at the top, no tie, and a gold chain was strung around his neck. He put down his cigar as she walked past, watching her hips sway as her heels clicked against the ground. Less than five minutes later he seated himself next to her at the bar, an easy mark.

"Vodka." She ordered in English, her acquired American accent as seamless as ever. Her accent tended to falter when she switched back and forth between Russian and English when she wasn't careful, but she was on a mission, and she too focused to let anything slip.

"Make is two." Motya seated himself next to her with a smile that made Natasha want to shatter his jaw, but the smile she returned was sultry and inviting.

"Your Russian is beautiful, much like yourself. But, tell me, how does an American like you end up here?" Their drinks arrived and she downed hers in one gulp, Motya eyed her, impressed.

"I'm a translator for the Russian Embassy here in Tashkent." She waved down the bartender for another drink.

Clint listened idly through the comm unit as he waited for Natasha, he couldn't do his end of the deal until he got Motya's key card. This mission was what Natasha was made for, all quiet subterfuge and deception, refined elegance over brute force. She was like a human computer virus, worming her way into people's lives and minds, gathering information quietly before striking, the system falling apart from the inside as she did.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go freshen up." There was a slight rustling on the other line as Natasha got up. The pass went smoothly, both agents being too skilled to fumble or falter as the small rectangle of plastic slipped between them without so much as a glance.

She returned to her station at the bar as Clint quickly searched Motya's room, looking for anything that would tell them where Moradi would be the next day. There were papers strewn over the desks and tacked to the walls, he'd been here longer than they'd thought, but they were of little use. He found a computer, but even that didn't turn up anything. All their business must've been done by phone, no paper. Clint swore under his breath, trying to think of where else to look when he caught something from Natasha.

"Do you know him?" Her words were slow and slightly slurred from the free-flowing drinks in front of her. She knew she was done for when he bought the bottle, that was the problem with drinking as a cover, you sometimes lose yourself. But she wasn't lost yet, a champion of holding her liquor, Natasha was still in control.

Clint couldn't hear what Motya was saying, he waited tensely for another word from Natasha.

"You mean it's time to leave?" She lowered her voice, trying to both seduce Motya and warn Clint. Both read her loud and clear.

"You know what, I've got friends too." Clint stopped in his efforts to erase all traces of himself from the room. What was Natasha doing? "Tall, blonde, funny too. I'll see if I can find her." With a wink she walked off again, though this time she didn't return.

As soon as she was clear of the bar she stumbled her way back to her room, Clint was waiting for her.

"You alright?" He asked, noticing how it took her three tries to get the door open.

"I'm pretty drunk." She slurred, flopping down onto the bed still dressed. "How'd you do?"

"Well, I couldn't find anything in any of his papers or on his computer before you told me to get out. But, on the way out, I snatched this." He handed her a post-it that she didn't even pretend to read. "Address and time, I can only guess what for."

"Good work, Wonderboy." She let the note slip from her fingers and fall to the floor. "We should celebrate." Natasha suggested, Clint laughed.

"I think you've had enough for one night. We have work to do tomorrow." He sat down on the bed next to her as she sat upright and kicked off her heels, her head swimming.

"_You_ have work tomorrow, I did my part." She leaned into him, shrugging. After drinking about half a bottle of vodka in an hour and a half, Natasha's accent was slipping and she kind of hated it, but not enough to keep covering it up.

"You don't get off that easy, you're still my backup." He stood up, dragging Natasha to her feet despite her protests. "C'mon, let's get you to bed."

With some considerable effort, Clint managed to get Natasha out of her dress, into a t-shirt, and wiped off most of her makeup; though she was far from cooperative. Drunk Natasha was really fidgety, she couldn't sit still and would move every time Clint turned around.

"Hey Clint, can I ask you something?" She asked as he knelt in front of her with a wet towel, washing off the makeup covering the tattoos on her arms.

"Depends on what you're asking." He replied with a shrug.

"The night we slept together, when you said that you didn't know where we stood. But, that wasn't really what you wanted to say, was it?" Clint stilled, taken aback by her question. Natasha was usually more apt to ignore something like that, not press the issue. But, she was right and he wasn't sure he wanted to open that door quite yet. At least, not here and now.

"No, it wasn't." He hoped that would satisfy her, it didn't.

"What did you want to say?" She pressed when he looked away from her.

"Another time, Nat." He went back to cleaning off her arms, but she didn't seem to want to let it go.

"Why not now?"

"I'll make you a deal: I'll tell you what I was going to say if you'll tell me where you were last week on you solo mission." He'd long since learned that if you wanted Natasha to back down, you'd have to throw her a challenge she wouldn't take. In reality, it was a fair trade, but even intoxicated, Natasha was too guarded to let something she clearly wanted to keep secret slip.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Natasha asked sharply, snapping back into a razor-sharp focus.

"Wouldn't you if you were me? I mean, you leave without a word on a mission that didn't come from our handler, return without a word and then start getting phone calls from 'old friends' on your personal phone. I'm just saying it's weird, Nat." The last thing Clint wanted to tonight was make her angry or defensive and he seemed to be walking a really fine line right now with her.

"It was just a simple NQK, Clint." She said, relaxing. _NQK, _Clint thought, _No Questions Kill. _Natasha was often dispatched on NQK missions because she was really good at, well, not asking questions. Most of the time they came directly from Fury, but it still didn't explain the phone call. He let it go, Natasha did have old friends and maybe he was just being paranoid thinking it meant something. Maybe it was just bad timing. He shrugged it off.

"We've got a long day ahead, let's get some sleep." He stamped out any further lines of questioning on both parts and Natasha seemed content to comply, flopping back down onto the bed while Clint turned out all the lights. Despite their somewhat tense exchange just a few moments ago, Natasha and Clint both seemed happy to relax into each other. Clint thought Natasha was asleep when she stirred to face him in the dark.

"Can I ask you another question?" When before Natasha was drunk, now she was half-asleep and drunk and there no traces of her American pretenses were left; she spoke in a heavy Russian accent that made Clint think that Natasha could make anything, even Russian, sound beautiful.

"Sure." Clint traced lazy circles in the small of her back, not quite focusing on what she was saying.

"You don't have to say yes." She said before she even asked.

"Just ask, Nat."

"Do you think I'm a good person?" The question had an unexpected weight to it. Clint wanted to say yes, of course, but he couldn't. Not really. She was better, that much could be said, than when they'd first met, but good? Could anybody in their line of work be a good person? Clint didn't even think he was a good person, he never really thought about whether or not Natasha was.

"Does it matter?" Clint asked her; he never her to be the type that cared about character, especially her own.

"Shouldn't it?" She responded with a shrug.

"I don't know." Natasha sighed, resting her forehead on Clint for a moment before turning away from him. She fell silent and was out in minutes, the late hour and the vodka catching up to her quickly, but for Clint, sleep was late to come. His mind wouldn't quiet down, he kept thinking about Natasha, and himself in turn. If Natasha wasn't a good person, then what was he? Could he be a good person and love someone who was not? Maybe he was a bad person then, the thought made him uneasy. _Be good, _the words his parents would say to him everytime he'd run out of the house, chasing a stray cat, splashing in new puddles, running off after his big brother. _Be good, _the words swelled with pride that his brother would whisper to him, hands firmly gripping his shoulders, on the nights he performed. _Be good, _they'd all told him to be, all wanted him to be, but was he? What would his family think of him now? He didn't think he wanted to know the answer to those questions.

Eventually the steady rhythm of Natasha's heavy breathing lulled Clint off to sleep.

"Target's car approaching." Natasha's steady voice reminded him of her chameleon qualities that had always intrigued him. Gone was the openness of the night before, her fears and uncertainties melting away as the alcohol melted from her veins, leaving the hard, driven woman he knew.

Clint looked through his scope in the direction she was looking through a black market, military grade monoscope. Point of interest, it's not SHIELD tech, but from Natasha's personal collection, Clint didn't even bother to ask why or how.

Lying side by side in a blanket of fallen leaves, they both watched in silence as two cars approached. One Motya's, the other Moradi's. When they stopped men poured out of both cars, about six in total, only one of them the target. Clint was unusual, at least to Natasha, in that he never tensed before he took a shot as she'd seen so many do, he relaxed into his bow or his gun and it seemed to Natasha that in those few minutes before he took a shot, he and the weapon were no longer two separate items, but one in the same. Like it was an extension of himself rather than an addition.

She waited, impatiently.

He waited, but timed seemed to no touch him.

"No shot." He said it like it was a curse, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

"Please do not say it." Natasha warned him tightly.

"Now, we wait." He said with a small smirk, her irritation alleviating his own.

"I'm going to kill you." She got to her feet.

"What are you doing?" Clint asked, grabbing her ankle, and grateful that these guys had chosen to meet just beyond the edge of a heavily forested areas where the trees hid any and all movements.

"We can't just sit here and wait. Control the play, Barton. I'm going to flush them out." She started to walk away when Clint pulled her back.

"That's an unnecessary risk, Romanoff."

"Not unnecessary. If we wait it out, then you might not get a shot. If we let them leave of their own accord, you'll never get the shot at Moradi. You need to get them to panic to get him alone. Unless, of course, you would rather just shoot all of them and hope he doesn't happen to escape in the process. I'm taking control." She wrenched free from his grasp. Clint sighed frustratedly, pulling a knife from his boot and handing it to her.

"Take out the cars first." She rolled her eyes at him, but took the knife. Of course she would take out the cars first. She popped her comm into her ear before making her way down to small house, effortlessly blending into the trees.

Clint watched through his scope as Natasha silently snuck up behind one of the two sentries kicking his feet out from under him, smashing his head into the concrete driveway, hard, when he fell. The second guard saw her attack and raised a small caliber handgun at her. Natasha kicked the gun out of his hand before he had time to fire and the blade of Clint's knife buried itself in his throat before the man could even react to Natasha's attack.

The blade found it's next victim in the tires of both vehicles, nobody was leaving anytime soon.

Natasha made her way around the back of the house to a large propane tanker she'd noticed on their scout earlier. She kept her distance, firing two shots, the tanker exploded, taking the back half of the house with it. Whoever hadn't died in the explosion would make a break for the front door, where Clint would have eyes on them.

The loud, resounding crack of a sniper rifle sounded, followed by a jumbled mixture of angry Uzbek and Russian.

Calmly, Natasha made her way back to the front, three men still standing, all scared and angry. Another loud shot, two. Two more shots, from Natasha's handgun, zero.

Another flawless mission.

"Romanoff, Fury wants you in his office." Coulson told her after they'd finished debriefing. All Natasha wanted to do was go home, eat and pass out, but it seems that wasn't in the cards for her today.

She waved off Clint, letting him go home and get his own sleep and went off the Director's office, a usually unpleasant place.

"Take a seat, Agent Romanoff." Fury greeted her as brusquely as ever. He didn't even look up from his work as she walked in, it was only after she was sitting that he would look at her. But, that was standard too.

"I know you don't like bullshit Romanoff, so I'm going to cut right to the chase, you need to stop with these extracurricular activities of yours. I've turned a blind eye for a while, but you've gone too far." He slapped a picture of a man down onto the desk before her, all she could remember about him was his son. "A former CIA director Natasha? I can't have shit like this coming back to us." _A former CIA director who made all of his money exploiting people in war ravaged nations_, Natasha thought to herself. But, she'd been prepared for this moment.

"Look, legally, I don't exist. Not here, not anywhere. I'm fast, I'm clean, I burn my fingerprints off religiously, I'm the best of the best and since I do not officially work for you, there's no way that a) I can be tracked and b) certainly not you." She shrugged.

"Romanoff, I don't know where you got the idea that you don't work for me, but I'm your boss and you'll do as I say." His one eye narrowed at her, but Natasha was standing her ground.

"No, I don't. I came here under such unusual circumstances that a lot of the red tape was skipped, including a contract of employment. I get paid for services rendered, yes, but I'm not in your employee database and I never made any sort of conditions of employment with anyone. I'm like a consultant more than an actual employee."

"Whatever you are, I will not put up with any of your unsanctioned jobs."

"You will." Natasha's voice was hard and forceful, unwilling to bend under Fury's murderous gaze.

"And what in God's name would make you think you have the authority here."

"Because I know something you don't know." She responded with a smirk.

"And what makes you so sure?" He relaxed, sounding amused.

"I do my research, boss."

"Do tell." He prompted.

"There's this low-level CIA analyst, I won't disclose his name, and he's a whiz. You see, he's been on SHIELD's tail for a while, he just doesn't know it yet. He does know that a bill is circulating through congress right now, a budget bill with just about 20 million earmarked dollars allotted for 'special defense'. He knows that once the money is approved, it's never seen again. He knows money just doesn't disappear. Further, he knows that in the last 10 years, about 4 billion dollars had just disappeared from the nation's funds, all marked 'special defense'. Now, I don't know much about the CIA, but a small promotion, a little more clearance, a little more access, and he might just be able to put the pieces together. Might just be able to find you friends in the CIA and in congress, and might just expose SHIELD altogether."

"How did you?"

"I'm a spy, boss. And even a small vibration shakes the whole web. Bet you missed that one. That's the problem with big webs, like yours. Yeah you see a lot, but you miss a lot. My web is much smaller, much tighter, I see everything within it."

"So, the question is, what do you plan to do with this information?" Natasha knew that information was the currency in her business, Fury knew that she knew too. There was a curse in keeping Natasha, but a gift in it too.

"We both know that you deal out plenty of unsanctioned jobs, though not always executed properly. Last one you lost half an alpha team, you shipped the rest off to DC to keep it from getting out. They failed because they have never been in a situation without SHIELD's full support."

"I fail to see what the point of this is." Fury was clearly agitated by the fact that she knew his secrets.

"The point is, you need somebody who is self-sufficient in the field for those jobs. You need me. And I'm willing to do them."

"The catch?" Natasha didn't give away anything for free.

"I get to continue my 'extra-curriculars'." She said with a finality that made Fury resent her and respect her all at once.

"Why?"

"You have your reasons. I have mine. I won't ask if you don't."

"You are a piece of work, Romanoff. I've never once had an agent come and compromise with me."

"And you still, haven't. This isn't a compromise." Fury cocked his head. "A compromise is a situation in which both parties give up something and leave slightly disappointed. I don't know about you, but I didn't start this conversation with the intent on giving anything up."

"Then what is this."

"A business proposition. Think it over." Natasha got up to leave, Fury stopped her at the door.

"No need, you have a deal."


	11. Chapter 11

**This is a little late, but I got kinda stick while writing it. Anyway, I'm on break now so I should have some more updates for you soon. Please review!**

"How's our friend in the CIA?" Fury asked as Natasha took a seat in his office.

"On a one way trip to a supermax facility." Both Fury and Natasha disguised their satisfaction. Fury had been thinking about their deal for weeks, sending Natasha out on missions to test whether this arrangement was going to be as beneficial as she had thought. Natasha had completed every unsupported mission flawlessly, earning both of them exactly what they wanted. Fury dug through a drawer in his desk and pulled something out, setting it down on the desk in front of Natasha.

"What's this?" Natasha asked as Fury slid a thick packet of papers across his desk at her.

"A contract."

"A contract?" She thumbed through the pages, this would be a bitch to read. She was painfully tired, having just run three jobs back to back to back; two for Fury and one she'd picked up between the two. She'd forgotten when she'd last slept or ate and she was fairly positive she's broken at least two ribs on her left side. The last thing she wanted to do was be sitting in Fury's office.

"I thought we agreed that my lack of employee status was better for both of us." She pushed the papers back.

"It's not an employee contract, it's a consultant contract. The very first of its kind. You won't even be a SHIELD consultant, but a personal consultant to myself. You will get full agent status and support on our missions, you get your freedom on yours. You'll be considered a 'director's asset.'" Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I still think it's a bad idea. I sign this and I'm your responsibility on every SHIELD job I get paid for. You would forever align yourself with me; to declare yourself my ally would make all my enemies yours. Couldn't you just contract me to SHIELD?"

"All SHIELD consultants have a clause in their contracts, it's a code of conduct outside SHIELD designated work. That won't really work in your case."

"You don't have to take responsibility for me, Fury. The whole point of being a deniable asset is that you don't have to."

"I refuse to treat you as a deniable asset."

"Why? It's the best solution for both of us."

"Because, you are not disposable, Natasha." Fury's words hung heavily in the air and stunned Natasha, not that she'd let it show. She'd always been too controversial, too tainted for anybody to acknowledge working with her. Even in the criminal world, her name was toxic, and only the desperate or ignorant would hire her. Nobody, not even the people who raised her had ever dared to acknowledge her, to take responsibility for her. No one ever cared if she failed, or died.

"I'll give it no my lawyer, see what he says." Natasha responded, not displaying a trace of emotion.

"You have a lawyer?" Fury didn't think it'd be like Natasha to trust anybody with anything.

"Girl like me ought to have one. Don't you think?" She shrugged, standing and taking the contract as she left.

She tucked the contract under her arm on her good side and walked stiffly to her car, eager to get into a hot shower, clean clothes, and her own bed. The walk up to her apartment was painful and she knew she'd have to do something about her aching chest soon, but she could wait on it for a little bit longer. When she got inside she made herself a cup of hot tea and dialed her phone just as there was a knock on the door. Clint.

"It's open." She called as the other line picked up. "Hey, just got a contract; I need you to look over it for me." There was a sigh on the other end of the line. _I bet I look like shit, _Natasha thought as Clint looked over her apprehensively_. _

"I'm not getting involved in any of your SHIELD business. You can read your own damn contract." Her lawyer told her, trying to sound firm in his resolve.

"I could, but that's what I pay you to do, Isaiah." She pointed out, motioning for Clint to hold on for a minute.

"With what money? I've got a job and you've been ignoring my calls for the past week."

"Yeah, well, I've got other jobs too. I've been a little busy." Natasha's lack of sleep was catching up to her quickly, she kept pacing to keep from getting too frustrated; Clint leaned against her counter patiently.

"You do know how much this little enterprise of yours is going to cost?"

"How could I forget? I'll do it, just give me a day for R and R, okay? I'll drop off the contract tomorrow morning and you can give me details then."

"Natasha -" She hung up on Isaiah, knowing that if this kept going on she'd probably kill him, and that wouldn't help anything.

"Your friend again?" Clint spoke up, and she was trying very hard not to read anything into his tone. He knew that something was up with her, she was always gone and would never say where she was going or why and it was driving him crazy.

"Yeah." She said with a sigh, wincing slightly as the heavy breath left her. Clint eyed her suspiciously but she waved him off, or tried at least.

"I'm fine, just a little sore." She knew that even trying to pass off the stiffness in her walk and how restricted her arm movements were as mere soreness was futile, Clint saw everything and while Fury might have let her injuries slide, Clint would not.

"Just sore? Really?" He'd had enough broken bones to know that she was lying.

"Really, I'm fine." She insisted, wanting nothing more than to sleep. She knew she'd been working too hard when Clint got the better of her; his arm lashed out, hitting her harder than she would have liked in the ribs, his knuckles sliding the already broken bones. Natasha gasped reflexively, doubling over as a she let the pain wash through her.

"Totally fine, yeah?" Clint asked when Natasha could catch her breath again.

"Well, fine is a relative term. I can handle this myself." She spit back at him, clutching her side as she she stood back up straight. The last thing she needed was Clint on her ass over this. He scoffed.

"How is this any different from you?" She challenged. "You come home covered in cuts and bruises and I never ask a goddamn question. So get off my ass, I can live without you breathing down my neck. I have enough to deal with already."

"What is up with you?" Clint asked. "You're gone for days at a time, you don't tell anybody where you're going or what you're doing, you're in contact with people you used to know before SHIELD. I never see you and when I do, you lie to my face about where you've been. Months Natasha, it's been like this for months and you expect me not to ask a question? Just because you don't care enough to ask, doesn't mean I don't. Why can't you tell me?"

Natasha sighed, rubbing her forehead in frustration.

"If I told you, you'd try and stop me." She told him quietly, trying to put a lid on her anger. She didn't want to be mad at Clint, but he could never let things be, never let things go, and it was grating on her nerves, especially now.

"Maybe you should." He suggested.

"I can't. It's too important."

"More important than your life?"

"Yeah. Now, if that's all you came here for, you can go." Natasha was done talking about this with him, she needed to be alone. Clint, didn't move, he was just as stubborn as she was and her answers were far from satisfactory.

"I said, get out, Clint." She ordered more forcefully, slamming her hand down onto the counter. Her attempts at calming herself having failed miserably; she couldn't even bother to pretend to care anymore.

Clint wasn't even angry, he was just disappointed and hurt and confused and Natasha hated herself for being the one to cause it. Though she didn't hate herself enough to stop and tell him the truth, a truth he wouldn't and couldn't understand.

Natasha sighed, pushing Clint out of her mind as he left without another word and poured herself a double shot of her strongest vodka, downing it in one long drink. She ignored the pain, biting down hard on a kitchen towel as she set and taped the broken bones back into place, pouring herself another drink when she'd finished.

After a long, hot shower she tucked herself gently into bed, forgetting all about Clint as she fell into a death-like sleep. A, thankfully, dreamless sleep.

"Isaiah, what do you want now? I said I'd call you tomorrow." Natasha drawled groggily into the receiver, pulling her comforter up over her shoulders.

"It is tomorrow, Natasha." Shot back a voice she wasn't expecting.

"Bobbi?" She sat up and rubbed her forehead, acutely aware of the pain that followed her movements.

"Yeah, we need to talk." There was an odd sort of urgency in Bobbi's voice; it made Natasha uneasy. "Meet me at Elijah's in an hour." Natasha glanced at the clock on her nightstand, she was supposed to meet Isaiah in an hour.

"Another time, Bobbi. I've got something I've got to do today, I don't have time for coffee." She groaned, throwing the covers off and getting out of bed reluctantly.

"Trust me, this is one cup of coffee you are really not going to regret." Bobbi hung up on that cryptic not, leaving Natasha surprisingly confused and worried. As she showered and dressed and ate she kept going back and forth: was she going to Isaiah or Bobbi? Logically she knew that she needed to meet with Isaiah, if he had a job for her, she needed to take it. But, her curiosity burned with Bobbi, it was rare for her to call Natasha, even rarer for her to insist on meeting with a tense, cryptic message.

Natasha climbed into her car, her mind made up to meet with Isaiah and take the job, but somewhere along the way her curiosity got the better of her and she found herself inexplicably in the parking lot of Bobbi's preferred coffee joint.

"This better be worth my time Bobbi, I had an important meeting that I'm missing for you." Natasha slid into the seat across from the blonde, her tone more aggressive than she'd meant it to be.

"Another mystery meeting?" Bobbi asked as she took a sip of her latte, raising an eyebrow in suspicion at Natasha.

"So Clint's told you. Great, because what I really needed was for my partner become an information leak. Fucking fantastic." She wasn't necessarily surprised that Clint would confide in Bobbi about her, but it was irritating nonetheless.

"He's just concerned." Bobbi defended him.

"That doesn't make him any less a liability." Bobbi shrugged, Natasha did have a fair point, especially in their line of work. "But, that's not why you called me here."

"Smart girl. I called you here because I think Clint's about to do something very very stupid."

"More stupid than usual?" Bobbi chuckled at Natasha's joke, but the temporary comic relief soon gave way to seriousness.

"Yeah. Clint's got a meeting with Fury this afternoon."

"To do what?" Natasha asked, taking a drink of Bobbi's coffee and wrinkling her nose at the sweetness.

"He's terminating your partnership, Natasha." For the second time in 24 hours, Natasha had been taken aback in surprise.

"He's what? Why?" She was suddenly furious at Clint and Bobbi and herself. How had she not seen this coming?

"Do you really have to ask why? Natasha, he's pissed. We got drinks about a week ago and he told me about all this shit you seem to have gotten yourself into. He's sick of being lied to by the person he trusts mosts. It's been over six months now that you've been doing this too. He said he was going to give you one last chance to come clean, I'm guessing that one chance was last night."

Natasha suddenly regretted kicking him out last night; she suddenly regretted a lot, actually.

"Well, if he's made up his mind, that's the decision we're both going to have to deal with." Natasha propped her elbows onto the table and dropped her head into her hands.

"You two are unbelievable." Bobbi scoffed, setting her mug down onto the table angrily making Natasha's head snap up.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Natasha snapped defensively.

"You guys are so close to having it all, or were, I guess. Because Clint is very good at pushing people away, just look at me, and you are so fucking stubborn that you're just going to let him because holding onto this secret that you are so tightly guarding is more important than him and for Clint, spiteing you seems to be more important than being with you. So if you two want to throw away half a decade of trust and friendship, be my fucking guest, but you both better be prepared to deal with the consequences." She pushed back from her seat frustratedly, signaling her finality.

"No offense Bobbi, but I'm not exactly sure why you care about any of this."

"Believe it or not, I care about both you meatheads. And I swear to god, if I divorced my husband so you two could end the same way we did, then I'll be fucking pissed." Natasha couldn't help but laugh at Bobbi's reasoning.

"We must be the weirdest friends ever, Barbara." Natasha said with a sigh, shaking her head slightly.

"Yeah, you've got that right. But seriously, Natasha, is whatever you're hiding worth losing each other for? Honey, don't let your past destroy your future or his." With a few final words, Bobbi left Natasha to think on what they'd talked about, hoping that both of them would come to some sort of sense and stop whatever war they'd started with each other.

Natasha ordered a strong cup of coffee, ignoring the buzzing from her phone in her pocket. She knew exactly who was calling and exactly what he was going to say and Natasha wasn't in the mood to hear it.

Clint really wanted to end their partnership over this? She almost didn't believe it, but she knew that Clint could be just as stubborn as she could and though he didn't often let his temper get the better of him, this whole thing seemed cause enough for it to now. Natasha's lies had been the only thing keeping her alive for years, her whole career, her whole life, had been built on them and now her old habits were coming back to bite her. She'd lied to Clint before, and he knew it too, but not like this, not pathologically like she was now.

She could tell Clint the truth, but at what cost? Everything she'd been lying foundation for these past few months would be for nothing and destroying her lies felt too much like destroying herself too. It was an impossible decision, but one she'd have to make, and soon.

One cup, two cups, three cups, four cups of coffee later, Natasha was no closer to finding a solution than she was before, she was just more fidgety. But no matter how many scenarios she played out in her head, the end results were always the same: she could either lose him or lose everything she'd spent a lifetime building. She was running out of time.

She checked her phone, correction: she was out of time.

Clint's stomach twisted as he glanced at the clock, almost time. He kept going back and forth about this, did he really want to end things with Natasha? He thought of everything they'd been through, her pain and his, how far they'd come since she they'd met on that rooftop. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Then he thought of these past six months, of her absence and her blatant lies. If she didn't trust him now, would she ever?

"So what's this last minute meeting all about, Agent Barton? You rarely want anything to do with me." Fury was a little more than surprised when Hill had told him Clint wanted to talk, the two of them didn't exactly see eye to eye on just about everything.

"It's about Natasha." Clint kept his face and voice even and emotionless. Fury raised an eyebrow, he knew Romanoff would never let slip any information about their deal, even to her partner.

"What about Agent Romanoff?"

"I want to terminate our partnership and I don't want to deal with all the red tape." Clint's voice was hard and steady, but he felt like he was going to throw up.

"What happened to the dream team?" Fury's tone showed no genuine curiosity; he didn't need Clint to tell him what drove a wedge between the two of them, he'd done that himself.

"I'm not going to work with someone who lies to me at every convenience anymore."

"You were the one that brought her in the SHIELD, Barton. You knew exactly who you were bringing in and you convinced me to let her stay despite that."

"You don't need to remind me." Clint replied through his teeth, the reason he came to Fury instead of going to Coulson was to avoid this line of questioning.

"Maybe we should see what Agent Romanoff thinks of this." Fury jerked his head in the direction of the door and Clint turned to see Natasha leaning against the frame. She stepped through and the door slid shut behind her, Clint hadn't even heard her come in.

"What are you doing here, Nat?" Her face was as impassive as his.

"I got coffee with Bobbi this morning." She explained flatly.

"So she told you then."

"Yeah. And, for the record, I don't much appreciate it when people go making decisions about me behind my back."

"Like you have?"

"What I've been doing has nothing to do with you, Clint. But what you're doing has everything to do with me." She snapped, letting venom bleed into her voice.

"Barton, Romanoff." Fury broke into their argument forcefully. "So you know that Barton's here to get your partnership terminated."

"Yes, I know."

"And you came here because?" The director prompted.

"I came here to encourage the termination."


	12. Chapter 12

**Thanks everybody who read and reviewed the last update! This will probably be the last one before the holiday, so I hope you enjoy!**

"I came to encourage the termination." Natasha's words felt like a punch in the gut, a betrayal even by Natasha. When he saw her he'd hoped beyond hope that she would challenge him, tell Fury that she didn't want their partnership to end. His hope had been in vain. Nothing would be important enough to Natasha to make her tell the truth, not even him.

"Well, I guess that's fucking settled then." Clint snapped bitterly.

"Hey, this is what you wanted." Natasha replied with a shrug. Clint pushed up out of his chair and turned to face her, closing the space between them until they stood less than a foot apart. Natasha reflexively tensed, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

"You know that this is never what I wanted, Natasha." He told her, not even trying to hide his anger or hurt or disappointment from her. Now it was Natasha who felt sick, not that she'd let him see it.

"You're the one that called this meeting, not me." She took a step back and turned her back on him to face Fury. "Are we done here, boss?" Natasha did her best to sound bored by this whole exchange and Fury was eager to let them leave and settle this on their own.

"You're free to go. I'll let Coulson know about your change in status." Under any other circumstances, Fury would never have let this go down the way it had. But, Natasha sort of always broke his rules. With one look from her, Fury knew that Natasha was dissolving their partnership because it wouldn't be long before Clint figured out what they were up to. Fury was actually surprised that he hadn't already, but her outside missions sort of muddied the waters.

Natasha left a seething Clint in her wake as she hastily made her way to the training room, eager to let off some steam.

Her phone rang again as she pushed open the training room doors and this time she answered.

"Don't start with me Isaiah, I'll be at your office tonight." There was a lot of talking on the other line, none of which Natasha paid attention to as she pulled off her shirt and kicked off her shoes. She was about to reply to Isaiah when her phone was yanked from her grasp. The whole noisy room went instantly silent when they heard Natasha's phone shatter against the wall.

"What the fuck is wrong with you." She shoved Clint, hard, making him take a step backwards.

"With me? I don't know, Natasha, what could possibly be bothering me?" He nearly shouted at her.

"Fuck off, Barton. You got what you wanted." She turned and started to walk away but Clint grabbed her arm and forced her to turn back around. It took everything Natasha had not to hit him.

"No, you got what you wanted Natasha." Clint had lowered his voice again.

"Hey, I'm not the one that went to Fury, I'm not the one that put the nail in the coffin. That's on you." She wrenched free of his grip and took a step back.

"I'm the one who put the nail in the coffin? That's fucking hilarious Nat." He laughed a bitter laugh.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She shot back, her anger boiling just beneath the surface.

"It means you couldn't stop lying to me if your life depended on it. Has there been one moment in the last five years that you've told me the truth or has just everything that you've ever said just been another lie?" Natasha's rage bubbled over at his accusations and her fist darted out, cracking loudly as her knuckles collided hard against Clint's jaw.

"You're not even going to deny it, are you?" He asked coldly. Natasha couldn't remember a time when Clint was angrier. Yeah, sure, they'd fought before, often, but never like this.

"I told you a long time ago that people like me don't change. You knew exactly what you were getting into and you chose it anyway. So, don't act so surprised." Her voice matched her eyes, cold and hard. Unlike Clint who was all fire.

"I guess I just wanted to believe that you could be something better." Clint's words stung Natasha and he knew they would. Under any other circumstance he never would have said that to her, but he was gunning for a fight, egging her on, provoking her, and it was working.

Natasha hit him again, harder this time, and Clint didn't even try to stop her.

"Fuck you." She spit. "After everything I've done and everything that's happened, how fucking dare you." Natasha made to hit him again, but this time he caught her and punched her hard in the stomach, cracking her newly healed ribs.

"I never wanted any of this." Her words cut Clint as sharply as his had and he released her wrist. And it was those words that finally pushed the both of them over the edge. Clint lashed out again at her and a full fledged fight broke out between them.

Natasha and Clint were more fairly matched than they'd been when they'd first fought on these training mats, years ago. They were also angrier. The other agents watched in awe and confusion as SHIELD's top two agents went at each other, none dared to intervene.

The masses thought the fight was done for when Clint slammed Natasha hard onto the ground, her skull cracking against the concrete floor and the air leaving her lungs in an audible huff. But, Natasha wasn't one to let pain or even lack of oxygen slow her down, she promptly kneed Clint squarely in the chest, leaving her an opening to scurry out from underneath him. She was back on her feet in seconds. Clint made a grab for her ankle and Natasha narrowly missed him, but did not miss the opportunity to slam her foot down squarely on the middle of his hand. Though she lingered for a second too long out of spite and Clint managed to snatch her other leg, pulling her down to the ground next to him. It wasn't long until both of them were back up on their feet again.

They were a flurry of movement, a never ending sequence of attacks and counter-attacks, neither one gaining ground or losing it. Fighting between them, as bad as it sounds, often came down to luck over skill. And this time, luck came down on Clint's side when she slipped on the film of chalk that surrounded the chalk basin in the gym. She reflexively reached out to brace herself on Clint who wasted no time in twisting her outstretched arm behind her back and apply threatening force to her arm.

Natasha stilled and the only sound in the normally too-loud room were the sounds of their ragged breathing. The rest of the agents seemed to have held their collective breath as they waited to see how Natasha would react to Clint's victory. Natasha sensed Clint's smirk behind her and steeled her resolve, she was not losing this fight.

"You know, you still don't know the first thing about me." She drawled, willing all her muscles relax.

"And what would that be, Natasha?" He was curious to see how she'd try and talk her way out of this one. With Natasha, if she couldn't out-fight you, she'd do her damndest to out-talk you.

"Exactly how much pain I'm willing to endure for you." Without hesitation, she popped her shoulder blade out of it's socket and with her other arm elbowed Clint hard in the solar plexus, forcing him to release her. Natasha stepped quickly away from him, then turning back to face him as she cradled her dislocated arm awkwardly.

"Natasha-" Clint started, but both assassin's heads snapped towards to door at a righteously pissed Maria Hill burst in with Coulson in tow. What a sight the pair of them made, bruised and bleeding and still very obviously pissed standing in the center of the normally neat and organized training room that they'd just trashed.

"Romanoff, Barton, care to explain to me exactly what is going on here." Hill barked, she wielded the same authority in her voice that Fury did and was just as impatient. Natasha rather like Maria actually, the way she commanded herself and the other agents, but now she was just another irritation.

"Not really, no." Natasha drawled, her anger diffusing into boredom. She wanted nothing more than to find Isaiah, get the job he had for her, and get the hell out of New York.

"Not an option, Natasha." Coulson broke in, he looked beyond pissed. "You're my agents and you will explain why you and your partner decided to have a grudge match that destroyed half the gym."

"Here's the thing: I'm not his partner, and I'm not your agent. So, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do." She wiped the blood dripping from her mouth with the back of her hand and straightened herself, walking out with her head high. Coulson stopped her again at the door.

"Who's agent are you then, Romanoff?" Coulson asked, not quite believing what she'd just told him.

"Fury's." She called back over her shoulder, leaving Coulson, and Clint, more confused than ever. Coulson went to follow her, but was cautioned against it by Hill. Instead all three of them, Clint included, went back to Coulson's office to get this whole mess settled.

"What the hell does she mean that she's Fury's agent?" Coulson snapped at Clint who was just as shocked by her declaration as he was.

"Your guess is as good as mine." He said flatly with a half-shrug. Everything hurt, his whole body ached and he just really wanted to go home. Though, that wasn't likely to be an option just yet.

"My guess will be better. Natasha's been in meetings with Fury at least three times a week when she's in town. And her meetings are generally followed by her absence around base." Maria explained. "She's a valuable asset and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Fury's using her outside of SHIELD regulated missions."

"That still doesn't explain what happened between the two of you." Coulson shot Clint a pointed look.

"We had a disagreement is all." He said with a shrug, he didn't really mind telling Coulson about what had gone down between them, but not with Hill in the room. She reported directly to Fury and now that Clint knew Natasha lying to him for Fury, he was just as angry at the director now too.

"I've seen disagreements, that was not one of them." Hill insisted.

"Okay, it was more like the culmination of six months worth of disagreements. Happy?"

"Not really, no." Hill shot back.

"Look, Natasha and I may be in a fight, and it may be a big one, but that doesn't mean I'm at liberty to spill her trade secrets here. It's not really any of your business what we're fighting about." Coulson handed Clint an ice pack and he pressed against his head where Natasha had landed a pretty savage roundhouse kick earlier. "Thanks."

"So, you guys really aren't partners anymore?" Coulson asked, interrupting Hill before she could push Clint any further. She had the best intentions, but thought more like a director than Coulson or Clint did and there was a time and a place for that, but not here.

"No, Strike Team Delta's dead. For the foreseeable future, at least." He could tell that Coulson and Hill had more questions, but he was far from in the mood to deal with either of them right now.

"You going to medical?" Coulson asked when Clint got up without another word as he and Hill talked over god know's what.

"I'm going to go get a drink. See you tomorrow."

"You look like shit, Natasha. What happened?" Natasha sighed painfully.

"Thanks Isaiah, that's really what I needed to hear right now. What's the job?"

"Are you sure you're up for a job right now?" Isaiah looked over the beaten Natasha hesitantly.

"You've been on my ass about this for days. Just give me the fucking job." Whatever had happened, it clearly wasn't work related, this was a new kind of stress Natasha was wearing.

"If you insist." He grabbed his briefcase and set it on his desk, Natasha took the seat opposite and they began going over the specs together. Isaiah found that the most interesting thing about Natasha was her focus. Whatever had happened before she walked into his office simply disappeared, at least for the moment, as she became completely absorbed in the new task at hand.

When she had wrapped up with Isaiah it was nearing ten, later than she would have liked, but she felt confident in the job and all its details. She'd leave the day after tomorrow so she could heal up in time, it's hard to make a good impression with a black eye. Natasha knew it wasn't a good idea, but decided to throw caution to the wind on the way home, she really needed a drink.

She went to a bar not far from her apartment so she could walk home if it came down to it and it was a Wednesday night, so the bar was nearly empty.

"What can I get you?" The bartender was new, she'd never seen him before, a guy older than her, closer to Clint's age with short dark hair a close-cropped beard.

"Vodka." She ordered.

"Any preference?" He asked, drying out a glass with a dish towel and setting it in front of her.

"Anything cold and Russian. Make it a double." He dropped a few ice cubes into her glass and liberally poured the booze over the top.

"One of those nights?" He asked, setting the bottle back down on the bar top.

"It's been a long string of 'those nights'." Natasha said, knocking back the drink in one sip. She motioned for another and her obliged her. "I think I just did something really stupid."

"What, like go fist to fist with a bear?" He remarked, noting the bruises on her face and arms.

"No, my partner." She finished her second drink and he poured her a third. "Well, ex-partner now, I guess. It's been a long time since he's been that mad at me."

"A guy did this to you?" He asked, suddenly angry.

"Get off your high horse pal, I hit him first." Natasha replied boredly, knocking the ice around in her glass.

"There's never an excuse to lay a hand on a woman." He insisted, pouring himself a drink now.

"When she fractures your jaw, there might be one. I can handle myself and trust me, I hit hard." She rotated her knuckles to face the light, they were bruised nearly black, and flexed her hand a few times. They were stiff and sore, but she'd suffered far worse, and it was a kind of pain that was satisfying. Satisfying in the sense that Clint would be hurting far worse than she would be, because to be on the other end of a force strong enough to nearly break her own hand would not be pleasant.

"Do you want some ice?" He asked, taking her hand and turning it over in the light.

"In my glass, yeah." She gestured to her empty glass and he refilled it once more.

"So what were you two fighting about?" He asked, nodding at a customer who was leaving the bar. Natasha wasn't the type to confide in her closest friends, forget strangers at a bar, but she was still seething and she felt like screwing Clint over just a little bit more today.

"I've fucked up, a lot. The first 20 years of my life were basically one egregious mistake after another, I did a lot of damage to a lot of people. Now, some of them deserved it, I like to think that most of them did, but I know that some of them didn't too."

"What does this have to do with your partner?" He asked, pouring the both of them another drink.

"Patience, grasshopper. I'm getting there." She downed her drink, finally starting to feel the effects of the alcohol and gestured for another. "About six months ago I sort of started this personal crusade with an old friend of mine to right at least some of my wrongs. But, my partner's pretty disapproving, especially when it comes to me getting involved in all of this old shit and I knew that he'd try to stop me from doing any of it if he knew. So, I've just been lying through my teeth to him and he's not an idiot, he knows I've been lying and he finally had enough of it. He went to out boss this morning to end our partnership and I was so mad at him that I let him. Then this happened." She flexed her bruised hand. "I think we both really needed to hit each other, it felt good."

"Like human punching bags." The bar had emptied out now, only Natasha was left.

"Exactly." She finished her drink, ice clinking in the empty glass. She didn't even have to ask before her glass was refilled.

"I'm getting the vibe that you're a little more than just work partners." He said, not noticing how his statement made Natasha's jaw clench.

"Yeah, we were. Doesn't seem to matter now, though." She was surprised at how hollow she felt, how sad was.

"I think you should just tell him the truth, I think he'd understand if you told him what you just told me."

"Thanks, but I didn't really come here looking for advice." She finished her last drink and flopped a handful of bills onto the bar. "Have a goodnight."

_**Meanwhile, across town…**_

"What'll it be tonight, Clint?" The old bartender greeted Clint as he took a seat at the bar.

"Bourbon, neat." He ordered flatly. "Thanks, Jimmy."

"Uh oh." Jimmy, the owner of the bar that Clint had frequented since it opened, commented as he poured the drink.

"What?"

"That's your problem drink, son." He narrowed his eyes at the younger man.

"My what?" Clint asked, confused, as he knocked back the drink. Jimmy poured him another.

"The drink you always get when you've got a serious problem in your life. When you should be out fixing something, you come here instead and drink all my bourbon. Now, where's that pretty redhead girl of yours."

"She's not my girl, Jimmy." Clint made a poor attempt at masking his bitterness or his anger.

"So that's your problem. You've got girl trouble. She the one that trashed your face?" He grabbed Clint's chin, his hands dry and cracking from bar rot, and turned his head to get a better look at the damage.

"Yeah, we had a bit of a domestic today at the office." He poured himself a refill, he was the bar's only patron tonight, at least this late he was.

"Girl that small really does pack a punch doesn't she?" Clint laughed.

"Yeah, she's got a mean swing. I just wish she wouldn't use it on me. Though, I shouldn't be complaining, I was kind of asking for it."

"What did I tell you about starting fights with women?"

"Only do it if you're prepared to lose." Clint parroted back the old man's words with a small smile.

"And were you?"

"Well, I really didn't have much else to lose with her, I just wanted to hurt her. I've never wanted to hurt Natasha, not like that." Clint's anger this afternoon had scared him, he hadn't felt so out of control since he was kid.

"You don't really seem like the kind of guy who gets off on hurting anybody. But, as a general rule, I don't think you should be hitting anybody." Clint smirked, Jimmy had no idea what Clint did for a living.

"Trust me, she can take it. It wasn't the physical aspect of our fight that hurt her; I said a lot of things I really shouldn't have said."

"Why were you two fighting in the first place?"

"You know, I don't even really know." The realization that he had no idea why or how this all started surprised him.

"How can you not know?" Jimmy asked, clearly confused.

"Okay, I was mad at her for lying to me. And not just like one or two, it's been a string of blatant lies for the last six months. She's been more distant than usual and she'd be gone for long stretches at a time and come him covered in injuries and refused to tell me what was going on. I have no idea what or who she's gotten herself mixed up in. I got fed up with all the lies and all the secrecy, I just got so angry at her that after everything we've been through she still doesn't trust me or respect me enough to tell the fucking truth. Whatever she's up to, she's going to get herself killed and I decided that I wasn't going to stick around and watch it." Clint thought about all those times that Natasha nearly died and all his dreams where she did; he felt sick.

"That's it? And you guys called it quits?" Jimmy knew Clint was a stubborn fellow, but he was also a patient one, he didn't think Clint could ever get ever get to a breaking point.

"Yeah, I went to my boss this afternoon to end our partnership." He finished another drink.

"Why not just tell her yourself that you wanted to end things?"

"I wanted to do more than irritate her, I wanted to punish her. I knew going behind her back would hurt a lot more, especially from me."

"And you two fought because she didn't want you to?"

"No, we fought because she did."

"Son, you're not making any sense. I thought you wanted to end things."

"I didn't, and I don't. I never wanted to leave Natasha and I thought that maybe if she was backed far enough into a corner she'd finally just give in."

"Dogs will jump over walls when backed into a corner, Clint."

"I know, and I should have known Natasha wouldn't bend, she never does. She just breaks. Herself and anybody close to her. You know, she showed up to my meeting with our boss. When she walked in I felt this tiny glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, she'd stop being so fucking stubborn for once. That maybe I meant more to her than…" Clint trailed off, thinking of Natasha and her past, especially of the one name she ever let slip: James.

"More than what?" Jimmy prompted, breaking through Clint's thoughts.

"More than the guys that came before me. But, I don't think I do. I think I meant nearly as much to her as she did to me." The hollow thud as his glass hit the wooden bar seemed the echo after his words. After a few minutes of silence he reached for his wallet, but Jimmy waved him off.

"It's on me tonight, son." Jimmy offered sympathetically. He was fond of Clint, he'd known him a long time and he didn't think he'd ever seen him this torn up over anything, not even when he and his wife got divorced. This girl had hit him hard in all the ways you couldn't see.

"Thanks." He gripped the weathered man's hand firmly before heading home for the night.

Natasha flopped onto her bed at home, wishing the alcohol had more effect on her. She felt like a child again, back in Russia, alone and empty. There was a hollowness in her chest, a hole that had been filled when Clint walked into her life and told her she could be more than the weapon they made her to be. A hole that she'd forgotten had ever existed when he looked at her, touched her, and kissed her like she was worthy of being cared for.

But she wasn't worthy of anything, least of all him. This whole in her chest, this crushing feeling of abject loneliness, was what she really deserved.

Clint half stumbled into his apartment and practically fell onto his couch, he'd had too much to drink, again. And he didn't even know why he bothered anymore, the drinking never helped the anger. Clint always appeared collected and laid back, but it had taken him years to become who he is now, and countless hours of training. He felt like a kid again, that inconsolably angry kid that lashed out at everything and everyone. He never really did outgrow it, just got better at hiding it. He didn't even know who he was angrier at: himself or Natasha? He rolled onto his back, endlessly clenching and unclenching his fists at he tried desperately to get a fucking grip on himself. Lord knows he was no saint, neither was she. Maybe it was never going to work out between them, he didn't know. Clint did know that he was happier with her; happier when her smile reached her eyes, when she laughed at something stupid he'd just said or done, when she'd kiss him like he was the one thing she needed most.

But, she'd made her choice, they both had. Maybe he didn't deserve that happiness anyway.


	13. Chapter 13

**I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday! We definitely did around my house where the gift of the season was nostalgia, and a Sega Genesis. All I've done the past two days is play Sonic and Knuckles, it's pretty awesome. **

**Well, I hope you enjoy this next update and I pinky promise Clint and Natasha are going to make up soon!**

**Please review!**

"Isaiah, I swear to God, if you get me one more job like that I'm going to kill you next." Natasha threatened as the stormed into his office. The young lawyer had been putting it with Natasha's antics for too long, long enough for her words to have no effect.

"Natasha, I run every potential job through all those tests, the ones that pass get sent to you. It's not my fault that that's what you get. What went wrong this time?" He opened up his secured laptop, the one he only used for business dealings with Natasha to make sure all the money from her last job had been properly taken care of.

"Nothing per say, but if I have to spend one more minute with these ladder-climbing socialites, I'm going to go insane. Really? You think so highly of yourself that you are going to criticize the person you paid to kill people? That's your play, pal? Antagonizing a contract killer that's standing 3 feet away from you? These fucking people!" Natasha collapsed exasperatedly into the plush leather chair in Isaiah's office.

"Doesn't seem like a particularly well thought out move." He responded absently, fingers typing furiously.

"They all think because the have an obscene amount of money that they're so much better than everybody else. It's people like this that made people think communism would be a good idea." Isaiah smiled at Natasha's rant. "And they all have the most petty reasons to kill people. It's all like 'oh he made a pass at my wife while he was drunk' or 'well, he slighted me once 15 years ago and I'm still holding a grudge because I'm over fifty years old and still act like a child'. God, maybe I should just kill all of them instead."

"Then neither of us would ever get paid." Isaiah pointed out and Natasha huffed. There were a few moments where the faint whirring of the computer and Isaiah's typing were the only sounds in the room, Natasha had finished her rant for the moment and had moved on to angrily twirling a piece of hair.

"Okay, I've got an Italian mob hit or a prison break." Isaiah informed her, gently closing the lid of the laptop.

"Prison break, definitely. But, tell them I can't do it until next week."

"Why? You said you had some SHIELD time off." One of terms Natasha had set between her and Fury was equal time on and off SHIELD. If she spent a week on a SHIELD mission, she got a week off for her own work.

"I do from missions, yeah. But, Fury invited me to this big gala thing that a bunch of senators and international representatives and delegates are going to be at and I can't afford to look like shit if things go sideways on me. Apparently, this is where a lot of the back door talks to get government funding happens and people generally like to see what they're paying for." She shrugged, still playing with her hair. Hill had told Natasha that this was one of the biggest events of the year for them and people generally considered the invitation an honor. To Natasha it just felt like another con, only a little bigger than what she normally operated on.

"And you know all those old white guys will pay a fortune for you." He said with a hint of a smile. Even he couldn't deny that Natasha was impossibly beautiful, not that he'd ever tell his boyfriend.

"That's what we're counting on." She sat forward in her chair and resting her elbows on her knees, suddenly serious. "But, this doesn't just feel like a meet and greet; Fury would never bring me there if it was."

"What are you suggesting?" Isaiah's curiosity was suddenly peaked.

"My bet? Fury's making a power play, and a big one."

"What makes you say that? Maybe he just thinks you have the perfect face to advertise the company."

"I'm no billboard, not to SHIELD or to Fury. And even if I am, then why didn't he ever ask me to make my appearance before? It just doesn't make sense. Seems to me that Fury wants a walking and talking nuclear strike to back him up, like holding a gun to head of everybody in the room." Isaiah shuddered slightly at the thought.

"I guess we'll have to wait and find out, Natasha."

* * *

"What do you mean level ten, Phil?" Clint ran a hand through his hair anxiously.

"I mean, it says here that Natasha has clearance level 10. Only a director has access to her files or any active operation information." Coulson double, triple checked that the information in front of him was correct.

"What does it even take to get level 10 clearance?" Clint asked, rubbing his temples.

"Approval from the Council, for starters." Hill informed them, sneaking up on them both. "Fury must be more convincing than any of us thought to get Natasha approved for director's level clearance. Should've been one hell of a sales pitch."

"He can do that?" Clint and Coulson asked in unison.

"He's Fury, of course he can."

"For what reason?" Coulson asked, wondering what on earth could be so big that Fury would give a field agent, regardless of how extraordinary, that level of access.

"Do do exactly this, keep Natasha in the dark, and you two as well."

"This is bad." Coulson's entire body had tensed. "Really bad."

"What's Fury hiding?" Clint asked. There was no response, only a tense, uncertain silence.

* * *

"Seeing you in a tux is like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs, boss. What's that, your dress eyepatch?" Fury looked up to see Natasha leaning against the door frame.

"And you, a wolf in sheep's clothing if I ever saw one." Fury said with an appreciative nod.

"A wolf who'd really like to know what she's about to walk into." She'd gotten into the habit of speaking plainly with Fury.

"You know why you're here, Romanoff." Natasha saw through that lie in a hot minute.

"You sure I'm not here to acquire for you several documents of a more 'sensitive' nature, shall we say, being used to blackmail Senator Grant so you can win back the votes you need to pass legislation? Because, to me, that seems a lot more productive than SHIELD's hand model." Natasha sat back, feeling a little smug at Fury's surprise.

"You're not supposed to know that." His tone said that it was a warning, one Natasha ignored.

"You gave me the access to find that information, boss." She shrugged, trying to make herself seem as innocent as possibly just to irritate him.

"Don't make me regret it." A second warning.

"You won't, because that's not even tonight's main event. No, no, that's small potatoes compared to the international auction being held tonight at this little event. You see because two months ago SHIELD was hacked and hundreds of agents had their personal files stole, including mine. Now, they're selling that information to the highest bidding nation tonight. Were you ever planning on telling me? Don't answer that. Though SHIELD can easily outbid its biggest competitor if you can secure your funding tonight, you should really have a contingency plan."

"What are you suggesting?"

"That I steal the information you want, then kill the Russian delegate." She explained simply. "And the auction's front man too." She added as an afterthought.

"Sometime you are too clever for your own good, Romanoff." He never cared to be outsmarted, especially by his own agents.

"More like for your own good." She smirked and Fury couldn't help but to admire her, she was good. Great even.

"Well, at least it saves me from going through the whole briefing with you. The documents should be relatively easy to secure, that's tonight's first objective. You are going to find and take them from Senator Grant's assistant, the blackmailer, and I need you to learn what they contain. Then, you'll pass the documents off to another agent who will secure them off site. While I confront Grant you are going to take on the middle-man, Stanley Hobbs, to find out how and where the information is being held and who all's bidding. If you kill him, do it quietly. I don't have to tell you that this must be kept quiet." Fury talked for about another 20 minutes with Natasha making adjustments to the plan as she saw fit. Natasha stood when they had finished with both feeling confident; it was nearly time for them to leave the base.

"One more thing before we leave, Romanoff. If you're going to hold any of these grifter's attention, you need to look the part." He took out a flat, square box from his desk.

"What are you trying to say, Fury?" Natasha felt kind of offended, she looked perfect.

"That money only cares about money." He responded, gesturing for Natasha to look inside. She bent and picked up the soft velvet box, hesitantly opening the lid. Natasha's mouth literally fell open when she saw the contents: a stunning diamond necklace.

Fury filled Natasha's stunned silence, answering all the questions she didn't ask.

"Just over 104 carats with 52 flawless stones. Estimated auctions prices is at a little of 8 million dollars." He said, picking up the single strand of circular-cut diamonds out of the box and walking around his desk towards Natasha.

"You know, I stole one just like this a few years ago." She informed him as she pulled her hair off to one side, letting Fury clasp the necklace behind her. The necklace rested perfectly against her collarbones. "Very old hollywood-esque glamour. You really are pulling out all the stops."

"There is no room for failure tonight, Natasha." Fury's use of her first name did not escape Natasha, he was anxious. "Hundreds of lives are at stake, including your own. You need to be perfect."

Natasha suddenly understood the reason for the necklace. To SHIELD, she was infamous, but to these politicians, she doesn't even exist forget having any social standing. Her name meant nothing and neither did she. But, $8 million around her neck made her something, opened all the doors to all the people she needed access to. People always had a way of catering to the wealthy.

"I can be perfect." She assured Fury with complete conviction. Natasha knew she could be perfect, perfection had been instilled, programmed into her by the Red Room. She was made to be as shining, as beautiful, as perfect, and as cold as the diamonds that ornamented her.

Fury gave her a curt nod, opening the door of his office for her.

"Agent Romanoff." Fury said, offering her his arm. Natasha smirked and took it, looping her arm through his.

"Director Fury." An odd sort of intimacy had grown between the two of them in the months they'd been working together. Not like she and Clint had had, but something entirely new. Natasha didn't feel like she knew Fury or like Fury knew her, they always talked shop, never mentioning their personal lives or their pasts. But despite the dissonance between them, there was resonance too; an odd sort of easiness and trust between them, one Natasha knew only formed between the dammed.

"So, how's your foxtrot?" Natasha asked, smiling as they walked through SHIELD's halls.

"Hell no, Romanoff."

"What? I'd really like to know what I've been given to work with. If you suck on the dance floor, that'll reflect poorly on both of us. I'm supposed to making you look good after all." She was clearly teasing him, possibly his only agent that had ever dared to.

"We are not dancing." He told her sternly, but Natasha was having too much fun.

"We can't not dance at a party like this, people will start to talk." She put her hand over her chest dramatically. "Imagine the horror of it all, boss!" Natasha laughed at Fury's decidedly unamused expression.

"We are not dancing." He told her again, but Natasha could hear the barest hints of amusement in his voice.

"Please tell me you can at least waltz, yeah? Because it would be really embarrassing for both of us if you didn't" Natasha nudged him in an almost playful manner and Fury couldn't help but laugh.

And just like that, Natasha had achieved the impossible. At least in the eyes of the rest of the SHIELD agents who watched two people they'd never even seen smile walking arm and arm laughing.

It didn't take long for the news to reach Clint. 

* * *

"Director Fury, a pleasure as always." A man greeted them almost the second they stepped into the ballroom. "And who is this exquisite creature here with you this evening?"

"Jonathan Hunt, good to see you. This is one of my best, Natasha Romanoff." Natasha immediately recognized the name, he was one of SHIELD's hands in the CIA.

"Miss Romanoff." He nodded, looking her over with what he deemed to be polite interest. "Your reputation precedes you."

"Not all of it I hope." She gave him a smile and extended her hand to him, gripping his a little too tightly as he shook her hand.

And the night was officially off. Fury and Natasha were both quickly swept up in the whirlwind of fake smiles and honeyed words that came with politics, but both seemed to be experts at schmoozing and both had their own agenda.

Across the room, Natasha spotted Senator Grant and, not far behind him, the scheming assistant she was after. Fury had abandoned her already to hive of aging women who seemed to be obsessed with talking about Natasha and how beautiful she was as a feeble attempt to mask the insecurities this society had forced onto them. Natasha pretended her phone buzzed in the clutch tucked beneath her arm.

"Oh, sorry." She said, jumping a little as if surprised and handing off her glass of champagne to one of the women whose name she'd already forgotten. She pulled out her phone, pretending to check the number and sighed. "Sorry, it's work. I'll be right back." She grabbed her champagne again and melted into the crowd behind her.

Engaged in a very tense, very fake conversation, Natasha wormed her way to the senator, carefully avoiding him and going straight to her target. Her fake debate heated up and in the midst of arguing, she ran right into the target, spilling her champagne all over the front of his suit jacket.

"Fuck!" She exclaimed, immediately tucking her phone back away. "I am so sorry, are you okay?" She asked as servers immediately started cleaning up the spilled drink and the shattered glass that she dropped.

"I'll think I'll live." He replied with a cheeky smile.

"Do you mind?" She asked one of the servers, snatching a towel from them and dabbing at the man's jacket. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Don't worry about it, miss…?" His voice trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blank.

"Romanoff." She replied with a smile of her own. "There, good as new. Sort of." She gave him an apologetic shrug, he laughed.

"It's perfect, thank you. Can I get you another glass?" He flagged down a server.

"Thanks." She accepted the new glass and took a sip. "Look, I really hate to pull a hit and run, but I really need to get back to my boss."

"Catch you later then?" He asked hopefully.

"If you're lucky." She winked and brushed past him. When she was far enough away she took out the envelope she'd snatched from him in the confusion of the spill. There were three sheets of paper folded neatly inside, Natasha quickly scanned the information and tucked them back into the envelope and into her clutch. When she looked up she searched for Fury and saw him not too far from her, she caught his eye and waved her clutch, signaling that she had the information while not being incredibly obvious. He nodded and she worked her way back over to him again.

"There you are." Fury said amicably, clearly putting on a show for the men and women in surrounding him. The chatted mindlessly for a few minutes until there was a lull in the conversation where they could politely excuse themselves. Natasha was about to ask if he wanted to go get a drink when he surprised her.

"Care to dance, Miss Romanoff." She smiled and graciously accepted, letting him head her to the dance floor. It felt kind of awkward to be so close to Fury, to have his hand on her waist or to have her hand in his but not bad, just odd.

"What ever happened to no dancing, boss?" She teased as the music started.

"My waltz is good. Damn good in fact." Natasha laughed, but let him lead. He was right, not that she'd ever say, his waltz was damn good.

"So what did you learn about our friend Senator Grant?" He asked after both of them settle into autopilot, having gotten a feel for one another as they danced.

"It seems that our friend, hailed as a shining and true republican, had an affair with his previous secretary. Cliché, I know. He's been paying her off for the past year after he paid her to have an abortion. I have paper copies of their email correspondence."

"Good work, Romanoff. How'd you get it?" She'd disappeared soon after they parted. He'd been able to follow her for a while, noticing how easily she moved through the crowds, how natural her conversations and her presence seemed. If he didn't know better, he'd think she well and truly lived this life.

"I spilled champagne on him." She said with a satisfied smile.

"How do you do it?" Fury asked after a moment of silence.

"Don't tell me you don't know how to pickpocket? That's spy 101."

"Not that, how do you fit in so easily. Not just here, but everywhere? You make it look damn easy, that's for sure."

"I think you know as well as I do boss that in order to belong everywhere, you must first belong nowhere." All her previous lightheartedness vanished, she became the stoic agent that meticulously planned hits in his office.

"I know exactly where you belong, Natasha."

"And where's that?"

"And the drop point with my other agent." She smiled again as the music wound down and they parted ways. Fury on his way to Grant, Natasha to meet the yet undisclosed agent. The bartender was a SHIELD agent, but not the agent who would take the information, he would relay that Natasha was ready.

She strode up to the bar and ordered a French 75, giving the man an imperceptible nod as she accepted the drink. And she waited. For who? She didn't know, but she waited.

She hated waiting, that was never her strong suit. It was a skill she'd always admired in…

"Widow." Her thoughts were interrupted by an irritatingly familiar voice behind her.

"Hawkeye." She greeted coldly, all business. Clint was in place as a server, she mentally kicked herself for not having seen him before. Even in this crowd, she should've see it.

Clint had been charged with watching Natasha all night, it was practically torture the second she walked in and they'd been here for hours. She looked impossibly beautiful tonight dressed in a floor-length black dress that was simple, but elegant. Strapless, with a dangerous slit going all the way up to her left thigh she outshined the rest of the lot. Her hair hung down and draped her shoulders, drawing attention to the necklace that was worth more than he'd make in a lifetime glinting against her skin.

She was breathtaking.

"I'm assuming we can dispense with the pleasantries." She half-asked without any emotion.

"It's whatever you want, Tasha." He refused the let Natasha think he cared about this. "Your guy, the frontman, likely also has the information in his possession here tonight." He went straight to business.

"What are the indicators?" She asked, ordering another drink.

"He's been checking his inside jacket pocket every ten to fifteen minutes all night, and the left side of his jacket is riding low. He's got something important in there." Natasha tried, in vain, to see what he saw. He was, after all, still Hawkeye. His vision and it's precision was legendary around SHIELD, and Natasha was trusting that now more than ever. If he was wrong, they could all pay the price. But, this changed the plan, big time. If she played this right, she could end this whole thing in one move.

She grabbed the envelope out of her clutch, handing it to him.

"Make sure the men's bathroom is cleared." She instructed as he took the envelope now.

"So this is what you are now? Fury's guard dog?" Clint asked, tucking the paper into his coat. He couldn't help noticing how close they stood when they danced, how they both laughed and how at ease they seemed with each other.

"More like his attack dog. Just do it." She shot him a practically contemptuous glance as she knocked back her second drink.

Clint was again forced to just watch Natasha walk away and there was nothing he could do but take this stupid envelope back to SHIELD. But before that, he couldn't ignore what Natasha was asking him to do. He managed to get everybody out of the men's room and placed a sloppily written 'out of order' sign on the front.

Natasha found a different server, a real one this time and put her new plan in motion.

"I'll give you $100 if you go spill your entire tray of champagne on that Matt Damon in Ocean's Eleven wannabe over there." She offered. He looked so confused, but looked at the man she gestured at.

"Why do you…" He started but she quickly cut him off.

"And not ask questions." She made the last part a threat, and he complied the moment she tucked a crisp bill into his front jacket pocket.

There was a loud commotion a minute later as the metal tray and twenty or so glasses clattered to the floor. In an angry huff the target, Hobbs, stormed off the the bathroom with Natasha not far behind, effortlessly hiding in the masses of people that surrounded her.

She hesitated outside the door, pressing her ear to the wood she heard running water. Slipping out of her shoes, knowing the heels would make an obscene amount of noise on the tile, she pushed the door open and slunk in. Hobbs had removed his jacket and was rubbing it furiously under the running water. He'd removed a hard drive from the pocket, leaving it sitting on the counter next to him.

Natasha pulled a small hypodermic needle from her bag and crept up behind him, careful not to make a sound. Before he even knew it, Natasha had pumped a lethal dosage of potassium chloride into his veins and he collapsed to the floor. She snatched the drive and made a quick search of his body. A search that created more problems than she'd just solved.

Hastily, she popped her emergency comm into her ear.

"Fury." She called urgently, expertly keeping a lid on her rising panic. "This isn't an auction, it's an attack. I've got a bomb."


	14. Chapter 14

**Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed the past week or so, you guys rock my world! I've got some more surprises still in store for you coming up in the next couple of chapters, so stay tuned. **

"What the fuck do you mean 'you've got a bomb'?" Fury growled under his breath.

"I mean he's a fucking patsy, boss. There's a bomb wired into this man's chest, countdown started when his heart stopped." She dug through the man's pockets looking for something, anything, that could get her out of this. The only thing she found was a sealed heavy envelope packed full with the initials N.R scrawled in elegant, loping handwriting on the front.

"ебать." Natasha's stomach dropped as she turned the envelope in her hands.

"What?" Fury snapped.

"I'm standing next a bomb, Fury. That's what." She sat back on her heels and rubbed her hands angrily through her hair.

"Can you stop it?" Fury couldn't just disappear from this crowd of people, that would set off too many alarms.

"I'm a spy, not on the fucking bomb squad. You need to get everybody out of here. Now." She ordered, gathering the box and the envelope to make a hasty exit. Natasha was reaching for the handle of the door when it was pushed open and Clint stormed in.

"Give me your comm." He barked, shouldering past her.

"Clint what are -"

"Now, Natasha." He ordered, holding his hand out. Natasha complied quickly, practically shoving the small black piece into his hand. He immediately popped the unit into his ear and walked over to the body.

"Fury, keep everybody where they are. I've got this." He knelt next to the man, his fingers moving quickly and gingerly over the mass of wires and connections.

"Barton, what the hell are you still doing here?"

"Saving your asses. Now, shut up and let me work." Fury gritted his teeth, of course Hawkeye had ignored his orders. Though, turns out his defiance may be their saving grace. "You got a knife, Nat?"

"That even a question?" Strapped to the inside her right thigh was a small dagger, she deftly removed it, spinning it to offer him the hilt. Clint placed the knife between his teeth, his hands intently separating wires until they seemed to retangle around his fingers, but Clint knew exactly what he was doing.

"Tasha." Clint said, his voice muffled by the blade in his mouth. "I need you to the pull this metal plate off to expose the wires beneath it." She knelt across from him on the other side of the body, her hands hesitating slightly as they hovered over the box.

"Nat." She looked up at him, his eyes steady and calm. "Trust me." He ordered and her moment of doubt passed, she quickly pried the small metal plate up to show yet another tangle of wires. He extricated himself from one tangle of wires to get himself mixed up in another, but he found exactly the one he was looking for.

"Okay, now I need you to take the knife." He loosened his jaws as she reached for the blade, letting her take the knife back. He pulled on a wire that he held between his forefinger and his thumb, drawing Natasha's attention to it.

"Cut that one." He instructed. Natasha hesitated again.

"Are you sure?" Clint heard a tremor in her voice, barely noticeable, but there. Even Natasha got scared, especially at the prospect of dying.

"Honestly? No. But, the way I see it, we have two options: cut this wire and maybe we live and maybe we die, or do nothing and definitely die. It's my best guess on what we should do and we're don't have the time to do this any better." Natasha whole body became rigid as he pulled the wire again.

The seconds that passed felt like an eternity as Natasha weighed her options.

"Well," Natasha began when she had made up her mind. "If this doesn't work, I guess I'll see you on the flipside." She slipped the knife under the thin wire and pulled up, the sharp knife cutting through the wire with ease.

They both held their breath and waited. The timer stopped and both of them let out heavy breaths they hadn't known they'd been holding and laughed out of sheer relief. Which, Natasha realised was probably a strange sight, two people in black-tie formal wear sitting on a bathroom floor laughing over a dead body. The thought only made her laugh harder. Their humor was short lived when Natasha remembered the envelope, and Fury. Clint sensed the shift and went back to his strictly-business demeanor, handing Natasha back her comm unit.

"Crisis averted boss." She informed him calmly.

"You two are some damned miracle workers. Let's get out of here ASAP, Romanoff."

"You read my mind, Fury."

"Get anything off the body?" Clint asked, walking over to the door and opening it just a crack. "You're good." He said, indicating Natasha was clear to leave.

"Just the drive, like you said." She lied, tucking the two objects into her bag with her back turned to him. "I should get back, can you deal with the body?"

"I've got it." He responded shortly, his frustration with her creeping back up.

"Thanks for the assist." She said as she ducked out of the room, not even making eye contact with him.

"Anytime." He muttered to himself as the door banged shut, leaving him alone with a corpse. Clint sighed.

_**Back at base…**_

"I want every available agent with clearance on this. I want to know exactly how an auction turned into a terrorist attack." Fury had been barking orders the second the two of them had set foot on base with Clint and a handful of other stationed agents in tow.

"You two, in my office now." He ordered, pointing at Clint and Natasha. They looked at each other and reluctantly followed Fury through his office doors, both wishing to be anywhere else.

Fury briefly went over how things went on his side of the mission. Of course, things went off without a hitch and all their funding had been secured. And while, Natasha had held up her end of the bargain, nobody there would qualify the near disaster a success. They were lucky that they knew Fury wouldn't really blame them for it though, not even he had seen that coming.

"Natasha, tell us what you've got." He meant the drive, she hadn't told Fury about the envelope. She didn't know if she would, but there was something she did know: Clint should be as far away from all this as possible.

"Barton can't be in here if I do, Fury." She told him flatly, crossing her arms.

"What the fuck, Natasha?" Clint felt like she'd just stabbed him.

"You said only agents with clearance, and he doesn't have it." She pointed out. Fury eyed them both. He knew they were on the fritz, they'd caused about $3,000 in damage to one of their training rooms for Christ's sake, but he knew Natasha was this petty. Either she was protecting him, or herself. Maybe both.

"You're dismissed, Barton." He told him, trusting Natasha.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me. I come back, risk my life to save both your assess and save your fucking op and you're just going to throw me out because she has trust issues the size of fucking Jupiter?" Clint nearly shouted at their boss. Natasha said and did nothing.

"I make the calls here, Barton. Not you. Either you can leave or I can have you removed."

"Are you sure she's not the one in charge?" Clint continued. "Because giving a Russian spy who made her career out of working against us clearance way above her pay grade doesn't exactly strike me as a smart business model."

Natasha felt her anger rising, but kept her face blank. She knew Clint was angry, but she still didn't think it gave him any right to say any of this shit.

"If my memory serves, you're the one that worked so hard to convince me to keep her because you saw her as a potential asset. Now I have and I'm making my decision based on her skill and performance. Don't drag your personal shit into my office."

"Well, Nat, it seems you've found your perfect match: a guy who lie to you as much as you lie to everybody else. Have fucking fun." Clint was irate as he stormed out of the office. Desperately needing to shoot something, Clint went down to the range to get Natasha out of his head with every arrow he let loose.

"You know I was really hoping you guys would be over this shit by now, it's been months." Fury rubbed his temples tiredly.

"I'm aware. Speaking of which, since when do you play matchmaker?" She asked, referring to putting Clint in there with her tonight.

"Since you are the best team I ever had and now you can't seem to stand one another."

"You can't win everything, boss." She sat across from him and set the drive down on his desk. "But, back to business. I pulled this off the body. Something tells me that it isn't exactly the information you've been after."

"Something tells me you're right. We need to find out what's on that."

"Don't you dare put that in your computer." She snatched the drive out of his hands. "We were already hacked once, you want a repeat event? Do not put this in SHIELD's network, it's likely encrypted anyways."

Fury shot her an annoyed look, but called in their IT departments head, Emily Harris. She was probably the only tech with the same clearance as either of them, and she was incredibly brilliant. Natasha loved working with her.

"This computer is completely off our network, if someone's watching this they'll be able to track the signal, but they won't have access to any of our files or data." She said, connecting the drive.

"Okay, this is weird." She said, brow furrowing after a few minutes of furious typing. "Like really weird."

"What?" Fury and Natasha asked in unison, crowding around her screen. She pushed them off and broadcasted through the projector so they could all see.

"For one it's not encrypted, whoever put this together really wanted you to see this."

"See what?" Fury asked.

"Not you. Her." Emily looked at Natasha with a mixture of pity and fear. Natasha looked up at the screen to see a picture of herself from when she'd been undercover on. Then the picture changed to a face neither Emily nor Fury would recognize, but Natasha did. It changed again, face after face after face of people only Natasha could know. She'd killed all of them.

"This wasn't an attack against SHIELD." It wasn't a realization, she just didn't want to admit it until now. "It was an attack against me."

"Who are these people?" Emily asked, Natasha suspected that Fury already knew.

"People that I've killed." She said flatly, ignoring Emily's blatant shock.

"There are hundred of images here." She couldn't believe one person could do this.

"1106, if they were thorough." Even Fury was stunned into silence by that number. "To be fair, I am counting all the collateral too." She amended. No, she hadn't killed every person on that list herself, but chaos that followed her often claimed more lives than the one she was charged with taking. Still, she counted them. Every one.

Nobody said anything but the pictures still rolled. And rolled. And rolled. All the same, all marks, all except the last. The last picture was taken from the same mission as the first except it wasn't her in the frame this time, but Clint. Natasha thought her heart might stop.

"Get Barton into protective custody. Now." She snapped at Fury. He understood as quickly as she had what that picture meant, it was a threat.

"He's in the range." Fury told her, easing some of her anxiety. He was still at SHIELD and if he was here, he was safe. At least, she hoped so.

"He's not going to like this." Fury told her as he sent security to confine Clint to a cell.

"Better safe than sorry, yeah?" She watched the monitors intently to see Clint's reaction. It was, as they predicted, not a good one and two of the security guards ended up in medical before they managed to sedate him and drag into the cellblock. Natasha probably should have felt at least a little bad about the whole thing, but she only felt relieved.

"Natasha, I hate to ask, but do you have any idea about who is behind this?"

"I've got over 300 ideas, and they're all looking at us." She muttered.

"I'm going to run a program that'll look for any embedded software and coding. It should work through all the files by about ten tomorrow." Emily told them. "There's not a whole lot else I can do right now."

"You're dismissed." Fury waved her off. "And Harris, this does not leave my office."

"Of course." She shot Natasha one last apologetic look as she left, her bright pink heels clicking loudly all the way down the hallway. Fury grabbed his jacket to follow her, it was nearing one in the morning now.

"You should get going too, Natasha. There's nothing you can do here."

"There's even less I can do at home." She insisted, she couldn't leave. Not yet, not now. Fury shrugged and left, knowing there was nothing he could say to dissuade Natasha because, not matter how calm and collected she appeared, this had struck a nerve in Natasha that he'd never seen. This was something she needed to do, so he left her to it. They could deal with the consequences of it later.

He said nothing more, leaving Natasha to her own devices in the privacy of his own office.

She must have watched that stupid video 20 times by the time Fury rolled back into his office sometime after eight.

"That's it Romanoff, go home." He ordered, kicking her out of his chair. She looked exhausted, but could not tear her eyes away from the screen and the faces looking down at her.

"I thought maybe there'd be something here, something that could tell me who or why. I can't see anything." She dropped her head into her hands and pulled had on her hair out of frustration. Clint's life was being dangled like a carrot in front of her and she couldn't see who was on the other side of the line. She hated the unknown.

"Get a few hours and we'll take another run at it when we've both got fresh eyes and Harris's program finished it's work." She reluctantly followed the directors advice, but at home she found she was too restless for sleep. She tossed and she turned until she couldn't stand it anymore and she fished around in her nightstand drawer. Pulling out a small orange bottle, Natasha downed a mouthful of little pills and lay still, until sleep not so much as washed over her, but hit her like a truck.

She woke up to the ringing of her phone next to her.

"Harris has got something for us" It was Fury. Natasha practically jackknifed out of bed and was out her door in minutes, ignoring the hunger pains in her stomach, she was at SHIELD in no time.

"So there's nothing here but this video, but I found something within the video itself. In every picture, there is one pixel that doesn't match the rest." She looked so proud, even though neither Fury nor Natasha knew what that really meant.

"But all the mismatched pixels match each other. It's kind of like whoever created this hid a picture within all these pictures. I'm running a new program now to piece them all together, should be done in a few hours."

"Excellent work, Harris."

"Thanks, Emily." Natasha said, maybe, just maybe, they were one step closer to finding what this guy was really after.

But now, Natasha had more time to kill again. She busied herself with getting food and she went for a run to distract herself, the music in her ears drowning out all hopes of thinking. But, soon she found herself wandering down to the cellblock: it was time to face Clint.

"You know, I think you're the first girl to break up with me then have me thrown in jail." Clint muttered bitterly as she stopped in front of his cell, leaning against the cold metal bars.

"You're definitely not the first guy I've put behind bars."

"I guess it wasn't hard to convince Fury that this was necessary since you guys are practically joined at the hip now." The accusation in his tone made Natasha tense.

"No, it wasn't hard. We agreed that this was the best place for you." She shrugged like it was out of her control.

"My how the tables have turned. I remember when they brought you here, to this same cellblock even. You were 19, and quite possibly the most stubborn and most irritating person I had ever met." He said airily, remembering the girl Natasha had been almost six years ago. "Some things never change, I guess." He finished.

Natasha would never admit that Clint's words were hurting her, she refused to show it either.

"So, you going to tell me why I'm here or are you here to gloat?" He asked, leaning against the other side of the bars to face her.

"I can't." She told him simply with a mocking smile.

"Of fucking course. Then why the fuck are you here Natasha?"

"I shouldn't be, but for some reason I wanted you to know that I didn't put you here to punish you."

"No, I bet you put me here to 'protect' me. It's the same fucking reason you use to justify everything else you do, but Nat, that's bullshit. I don't need your protection, I need you." Natasha was taken aback by his sudden admission and Clint shifted awkwardly on his feet as he waited for her response. When she didn't speak, he did. "And whether or not you meant it as such, this is still a punishment."

"You've punished me plenty." She muttered, thinking of all their fights.

"So what, this is your revenge?"

"No." She told him quietly, shaking her head. "It's not."

"Natasha, what is going on with you?" Clint always had a way of making Natasha feel even worse about the things she'd done. She'd treated him like shit for months, he should hate her, but he doesn't. He's still worried, he still cares.

"Don't." She warned, asking him to stop.

"Don't what?"

"Care, Clint. Don't make this harder on either of us." She felt defeated, like this whole thing between them had just been too much.

"Fuck you, Natasha." Clint practically spit the words at her. "You have been by my side for half a decade, you always had my back, always picked me up off the ground, sat by my bed whenever I was injured. You were there every second when I lost my hearing through all the doctors and all the test and all the shit you were there and you made it bearable. And you made me think there could ever be something between us then you turn tail and run? What the fuck is that? Do you just get off on hurting every single person that chances upon you, or was I a special fucking treat?"

Natasha wanted to apologize, wanted to make things right, to tell him he was wrong, that she didn't like hurting him, not like this. But, she didn't. She remembered all too well when Clint lost his hearing, how it tortured both of them both, how she'd voluntarily spent an obscene amount of time with all those doctors when she hated doctors.

Doctors.

"What?" Clint asked. Had she said that out loud, Natasha didn't know. Her brain had begun an instant replay of everything that had happened since Clint returned from overseas, still in critical condition and she suddenly knew.

"Doctors, Clint." She repeated, feeling a sudden weight lift off her chest. "I know who did it."

"Did what?" Clint asked, but she had taken off in an all out sprint away from him. "Natasha!" He called after her, but she was gone.

Natasha ran, ignoring Clint's calls for her, she ran as fast as she could, bursting through Fury's office. Harris was there, her program had run its course to reveal the hidden truth, one Natasha had discovered for herself just moments ago.

Staring down at them was the angelic face of a little girl, a little girl Natasha had wished she could forget and hoped she never would.

"Aliana." She breathed, it seemed like an eternity since Aliana. Fury didn't speak, neither did Emily. All of the faces, they were dead, killed at Natasha's hands. Now, the face was child. Could her face be the same as all the others? Fury feared the answer.

"I know." Natasha told them, not surprised by the image before her. Clint had told her everything without even realizing it.

"Fury, where's Dr. Drakov?"


	15. Chapter 15

**This update is a little on the short side, but I wanted to give you guys something for New Years. Let me know what you think!**

"Alright people, we have a priority one." Fury ordered as he strode into the operations center. "48 hours ago SHIELD lost contact with an asset named Dr. Semyon Drakov. We need to find him. We need to find him now. We need to find him twenty minutes ago. Let's get to work."

Natasha paced the floor anxiously waiting for something, anything to come up. Emily Harris had been brought into ops and had set to work, forming all available agents into teams, each assigned to a different task. The operations room buzzed with activity, and curiosity. Never had a rogue asset been this important before.

"Natasha, you need to tell us everything that you know about this guy." Harris told her, moving from workstation to workstation, issuing commands at each. For such a young woman, she was about Natasha's age, she had a surprising command of authority.

"Not a whole lot. Last year was the first time I'd seen him in like eight years." Natasha felt useless.

"Give us everything you've got. Where you met, past residencies, habits, quirks, vices, how he takes his coffee, it all helps." She pulled up his file on the room's main screen.

"We never really met until he became my mission, but all the girls knew who he was. He's a doctor, yes, but not a doctor of medicine. He was the Red Rooms chief bio-engineer, guys crazy smart."

"What? He made prosthetic tails for dolphins?"

"That's more biotechnology, but not too far off. He did cellular biology and genetics."

"Modified organism." Emily concluded.

"Exactly. Bacteria, viruses and later animals. He did some wicked science on rats and bunnies, then dogs and monkeys, and later…"

"Humans." Emily finished, Natasha nodded. "How old are you?" She asked, catching Natasha off guard.

"25-ish, why?" Emily's face lit up with an eager, satisfied smile as she bend over the nearest computer, pushing the agent working there aside.

"Because old habits die hard." She muttered, focusing on the work in front of her.

"Slow down, Harris, what do you mean?" Natasha stepped in between the computer and Emily.

"Okay so nowadays genetic engineering is all the rage, everybody's doing it because, well, they can. That's science for you. But, 25 years, ago, not so much. Only highly skilled people in the best labs in the world could do it, mostly governments really. And the thing is, it was brand new then, changing DNA, and nobody knew how or when or why it would all become relevant so all the up and coming scientists just slapped patents on anything and everything they created because no ownership laws existed yet. My bet, you have one too. ." She said, leaving the room. Natasha followed as they went from operations, through R and D, to the sciences division of SHIELD.

"Hey guys." She called, getting the attention of the nearest lab techs. "If I get you a blood sample, can you run it for any strange coding sequences and genetic markers?"

"Uh, yeah. I don't see why not." One of the guys replied with a shrug.

"Cool. Natasha I need you to get one of your blood samples from medical."

"No need." Natasha took the knife sheathed in the hollow of her back and slicing a deep cut into her hands. Blood immediately welled up, pooling around the blade, Natasha cupped her hand the keep it from spilling onto the floor. The shocked tech sprang up off his stool, rushing over to Natasha with test tube in hand. She wiped the blade off on her pant leg as she tipped her hand over the mouth of the small, glass tube, letting the blood drain into it and tucked the blade back into its sheath.

"Put a rush on it, it's priority one." Emily told them, a bit uneasy from Natasha's action. She didn't like blood.

"What I don't understand is," Natasha started when they were back in operations. "how that'll help you find Drakov."

"It might, it might not." She admitted honestly. "But if we can get your particular patent isolated, I can cross reference it with almost every known genetic patent in the world. So, if he's been doing any work for any lab anywhere, we might be able to find him. At least, where he was last."

"You're brilliant." Natasha was astounded by her, not for the first time either.

"Don't thank me just yet." She sat back down at her desk, relaxing back into her chair.

"I know this might be a stupid question." Natasha perched on the corner of Emily's desk. "But what about his phone?"

"We tried pinging the GPS on his SHIELD phone, but we got nothing." She shrugged, that was the first they had done.

"What's the number?"

"Natasha, it's probably been deactivated if we can't find it."

"There are ways to keep your phone from being found without deactivating it, yeah?"

"Yeah, but, it's not likely he's expecting any calls from us."

"Trust me, he's expecting at least one." She took the number that Emily had scribbled onto a small slip of paper. "Call me when you've got something."

"Will do." She gave her a dismissive wave as she turned back to her computer.

* * *

Natasha sat alone in an empty office with her phone set squarely in the center of the desk and the hastily scribbled number next to it, weighing her options. She felt caged, trapped in this stupid building trying to track down Drakov and it was killing her. Natasha always sort of knew that something she'd done would come back to bite her, but not like this, not now that she was with SHIELD and not through Clint.

Speaking of which…

"Harris said I might find you here." Clint said, pushing the door open.

"What are you doing here?" She snapped, angry and him for finding her and Fury for letting him out.

"I'm allowed to leave the cells, but not the base. I'm confined here until further notice, though no one seems to care to tell me why." He sat across from her. "Expecting a call?"

"About to make one, actually." She jerked her head towards to door, asking him to leave. He didn't move. "I can have security escort you out, if that's what you'd prefer."

"I'd prefer it if you told me what this is all about."

"I'd rather not." She replied with a sickly sweet smile.

"No, of course not. You'd rather sit there playing God with my life."

"Trust me, I'm not the one playing God right now." She grabbed the phone off the table, and before she could second guess herself, dialed the number. It rang and rang, all the way to voicemail. At least she knew that the phone was still activated and that was something new and, as Harris had said, everything helps.

"Hello darling." Natasha began after the beep. "I got your message, loud and clear too, love. But, honey, two can play at this game and I am much better at it than you are. So, listen well my good doctor, your wife's death wasn't an accident. I killed your wife, I killed your daughter and now, I'm going to kill you." She said it as casually as she could, like she didn't care at all about any of this just to piss him off, tossing the phone down onto the table when she was finished.

"Just another day in the life, yeah?"

"Oh, fuck off Barton. I don't need this, not fucking today, alright? If you want to continue this pissing match, do it on your own time, not mine." She pushed away from the desk rolling her eyes out of annoyance.

"No, you fuck off Natasha. You don't get to turn my life upside down, fuck with everything then tell me to lie down and take it." He growled, grabbing her wrist.

"I've got work to do." She said through her teeth, ripping her arm away from him.

She left him, again. He was really getting sick of this, and of her.

* * *

"Hey, I've got something for you." Harris said as Natasha walked into the operations center.

"So do I. What've you got?" She watched the tech genius pull up a bunch of different windows on the main monitor.

"Okay, when I got your data back from the lab, I cross-referenced it with every registered modified organism that I could find. Two months ago, a modified organism came out of IBM's lab in Zurich with the same genetic markers as yours. We can have a ground team there in two hours to look for him." She sat back in her chair with a triumphant smile.

"Solid work, Emily." Natasha commended.

"What did you find?"

"His phone's still active so we don't need the ground team. Pull up his file for me, will you?" She took a seat next to her. "I need his MIN number." Harris complied and soon all SHIELD's info on the old Red Room doctor was in front of her.

She picked up the phone on the desk and dialed SHIELD's carrier, motioning for everybody to be quiet, she placed it on speaker.

"Hi, my idiot husband lost his phone again and I'm wondering if you could turn on the GPS." She greeted the call center worker when they picked up. Her soft and pleasant tone made most of the operations staff uneasy.

"Alright, no problem. I need the mobile identification number."

"1-4-2-6-3-9-5-1-8-0"

"Okay, and his account password." Natasha hesitated. "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything without his password." She thought she was screwed until it finally registered with her that the person on the end of the line was a woman.

"Ugh, here's the thing, I'm not really looking for the phone, but the cheating son of a bitch attached to the phone. It's probably his new girlfriend's name. I don't know, try Ariel, or Amber, or Jenny with an -i. Hell if I know." Natasha hoped her emphatic rant would buy her the information she needed.

It did.

"Honey, I understand completely. Give me one minute." The entire room was stunned, nobody thought that would work. Natasha had just talked her way to the one piece of information they all needed.

"Well, you were right about Switzerland." Natasha told Emily as the GPS information came up. Fury walked in, having heard about the rapid progress being made by the two women.

"Just in time boss, we found him. Emily, I need you to get me on the first flight to Paris."

"Paris? He's in Zurich."

"I'm aware, but I need intel."

"We have intel." Fury and Harris said in unison.

"You have old intel." She pointed out flatly. "And I need the sort of intel that SHIELD can't get or buy."

"Then, what do you need exactly that SHIELD can't get?" Fury asked, there wasn't a shred of intel that SHIELD couldn't get when they wanted.

"A Raven." She said with an air of mystery. "Just get my on that plane. And boss, I need a requisite form B16." She added as an afterthought.

"You want to bring a gun on a plane?" He asked.

"Shit, I meant B17." She corrected, she found it hard to keep all the requisite forms straight.

"You want to be a fully armed agent on a plane?" He crossed his arms, raising his eyebrow skeptically.

"I don't really have a lot of time, boss." Her voice was pleading, she needed to be out of here as soon as possible, to leave no time for Drakov to get more ahead of her than he already was. She was stuck playing catchup and time was not a something she could afford to waste.

"In my office." He ordered. Natasha bit her tongue, but glared at the director, reluctantly following him back to his office, the order severely deflating her triumph from just a moment ago.

"What exactly is this guy's beef with you, Romanoff?" He gave her a look that meant he wanted the truth, no bullshit.

"Like 8 years ago, the Red Room tasked me with killing his daughter, Aliana." She responded blankly, her voice showing absolutely no traces of emotion. In reality, Natasha was anxious, more anxious than she'd ever been. He heart was beating too fast and standing still was driving her out her mind. She needed to keep moving, keep working, keep putting all the bits and pieces of a life she wanted to forget back together 8 years later.

"And that's it?" He didn't believe that, with Natasha, there wasn't more to this story.

"It's the only thing that matters, you saw that yourself." Fury had seen that video just the same as she had. If there was anything more to the story, Natasha didn't know, not yet. That was exactly why she needed to get her ass to Paris, post haste.

"Why Paris? What's in Paris you can't get in SHIELD?" Anybody who could get the kind of intel Natasha needed was a potential threat, one they didn't even have on a radar.

"In Paris is an old friend, a real friend too mind you. Not the kind of person you'd call a friend ironically because you want to stab them in the face in reality kind of friend." She heard herself rambling and cursed. "Anyway, she's a pretty integral part of my web. We've been working together a long time and she knows exactly what I need and what I look for, especially in and around Europe. And I don't have time for any of SHIELD's red-tape, bureaucracy bullshit."

"This bureaucracy bullshit is here to keep people like you from getting shot at unnecessarily. I don't want you going in guns blazing unsupported on this."

"You don't have another qualified agent to be on this." She crossed her arms defensively, it wasn't like Fury to stop her from doing anything.

"I think we both know that I do." He told her pointedly, Natasha shook her head.

"No, not an option." There was no way she was letting Clint on this with her. Even if they weren't impossibly mad at each other, Drakov have still made a threat against Clint, there was no way she was letting him anywhere near this.

"You are too close to this Natasha, this hits too close to home for you. You need someone watching your back."

"I don't need anybody watching my back." She responded hotly. "Last time I checked. you were just fine with me doing things my way, and on my own."

"I don't like where your head's at Romanoff. Go home and wait until I have things sorted out. That's an order." Fury left no room for argument, and Natasha reluctantly complied with the order. At least, so it seemed.

That was the funny thing about level 10 clearance, even though she was given it as a cloaking mechanism, it also made it so she effectively couldn't be given orders anymore, not by Fury at least. And she had enough authority to get almost anything she could want or need.

Two hours later Natasha was 35,000 feet in the air on a commercial flight to Paris.


	16. Chapter 16

**I hope everybody had a happy new year! This one was a little difficult to write and finish, and it didn't really end how I had planned it, but I think I like it.**

**Let me know what you think!**

"What do you mean she's not there, Coulson?" Fury half shouted into the receiver. Clint who could've seen that one coming from a mile away only sat back and smirked at the director's surprise and anger.

"I mean, she's not here and it looks like she left in a hurry. On the upside, we have a pretty solid guess on where she went." Coulson had been sent to Natasha's apartment after Fury couldn't get a hold of her, he had been pretty confident that he'd find her gone, that was sort of how Natasha operated. And now that she had the ability to move completely unhindered through SHIELD, there was very little that would stop her now from doing whatever she damn well pleased.

"I hate to break it to you guys," Clint butted in. "but, Paris is a pretty big place. And Natasha's a ghost, you won't find her unless she wants to be found."

"You found her once." Fury pointed out, referencing Clint's pursuit of Natasha years ago.

"Yeah, I did. It took me over a year to pin her down though, and she didn't exactly put up much of a fight to stop from getting to her." Clint knew that Natasha wanted to get caught by SHIELD all those years ago, it had little and less to do with him.

"Plus," He continued. "if you want to find her, you really have to be on the ground to do it. She knows exactly how SHIELD works now, she knows exactly what you look for, what methods you use. She'll be impossible to get to from here, she'll go way old school to stay hidden."

"Barton, please shut up." Fury rubbed his forehead in frustration.

"_And,_" He kept going, enjoying the moment where Natasha was screwing over everybody but him. It was a refreshing feeling. "you're all forgetting that she's got an ally on her side now. One that you've never seen or heard of so good luck finding her knowing that. The only thing you know is that she used her SHIELD clearance to get on a plane, but you don't know which plane or when and even if you did, it'll just dump her at Charles de Gaulle in the middle of Paris and the city will just swallow her. Face it, she's long gone and you've got nothing."

"And neither does she." Fury snapped, Natasha couldn't and wouldn't have any access to SHIELD's resources on this little adventure of hers.

"Yeah, but she doesn't really need us, or you. She wasn't trained in a place that would provide her with any support in or out of the field, she was trained to be entirely independent, to work with and rely solely on herself. Natasha can make something out of nothing, we can't. So wonderful job, Fury. No really, killer work here team." Clint was trying very hard not to just laugh at all of it.

"Face it Fury, you got played." He finished with a condescending smile, crossing his arms.

* * *

"Salut, chèrie!" The dark haired woman greeted Natasha unexpectedly, pulling up in a sleek black sedan practically the moment she stepped out of the airport doors, having spent a great deal of time arguing with the customs officers about the weapons she was carrying on her and in her luggage.

She smiled at the woman, it'd been years since they'd spoken or worked together, and slid into the car next to her. If there was two things you could count on with the Raven they would be as followed: she never drove her own car, and she always dressed impeccably.

"I heard you'd gone off galavanting across the globe with the famous Hawkeye." She took off her sunglasses and shot Natasha a knowing look. Natasha only rolled her eyes.

"Still keeping tabs on me then?"

"Always. But darling is it true?" Natasha always found Raven's heavy use of pet names amusing, and they sounded much better in her flawless french than from anybody else.

"We did work together for a time, yeah." She reluctantly admitted.

"So not anymore." Raven sounded disappointed, though Natasha knew she would be.

"I don't think so, no." If she was being honest, not even Natasha knew where they stood anymore, but she had bigger things on her plate right now than solving her problems with Clint.

"Natasha, how do you always manage to ruin every single good thing in your life?"

"Hey, how do you know it was my fault?" Natasha shot back defensively.

"Because, I know you, love. It's always you." She countered with a pointed look and Natasha sighed, knowing Raven was right. But, then again, she almost always was.

"You know, that's not why I'm here." Natasha was eager to bring the conversation to the business side of things and very far away from her relationships.

"All work and no play…" She muttered under her breath as she pulled a file folder out of her purse.

"I know, I'm a very dull woman." Natasha finished, taking the file as it was handed to her.

"Quite the contrary, my dear. You seem to have gotten yourself mixed up in an awful mess, I sure hope you know what you're doing." Natasha heard an odd tremor in her voice, so unlike the smooth confidence the Raven always had, it was fear.

"I will." Natasha said with a false confidence, knowing that he didn't have a clue herself yet. "This is my stop." She said, glancing out the window to see where she was.

"Are you ever going to allow me to see one of your famous safehouses?" Raven teased, her voice now steady as a rock.

"You wouldn't want to." She warned. "It's quite hard to step out of my web once you've been wrapped up in it."

"Why, darling, I'm already in your web." The Raven replied with a teasing smile. "Though I should warn you of something." She added on a more serious note.

"What?"

"There's a Mockingbird not far behind you." Natasha quirked an eyebrow in surprise. "It seems you're caught between a Raven, a Mockingbird, and a Hawk. Maybe, little spider, you're in the wrong business."

"Maybe, little dove, but not likely." Natasha winked at her old friend as she stepped out of the car. With the information tucked firmly under her arm, she slung her bag over her shoulder and strolled off to her Paris apartment, the location: classified. Even from SHIELD.

* * *

"You yourself said we needed someone on the ground if we had any hope of catching her." Fury pointed out.

"I didn't mean Bobbi, I meant me." Clint explained, thinking he was the obvious choice to reign in his ex-partner.

"You're not leaving this building until I say the goddamn word." Fury commanded. "And I needed another agent that Romanoff was unlikely to shoot."

"Well, then it's probably better that you sent her. I'm not so sure Natasha wouldn't shoot me." Clint muttered, pacing the floor. "Is anyone going to tell me why I'm on lockdown or am I just this week's entertainment?"

"Natasha didn't want you to know. But, seeing as she's taken this whole thing into her own hands, I don't see the harm in telling you now." Fury motioned for him to take a seat. "You remember the specialist doctor that fixed your ear? Well, turns out he and Romanoff have a rather sordid past; she killed his daughter. Now he's on the warpath and he's got her in his sights. The information theft, the bomb, all to get to her."

"So she's going to kill him first." Clint concluded. Fury nodded. "Okay, but what does this have to do with me?"

"He's threatened you, not her."

"Why me?" Clint didn't quite understand this new game they were playing.

"Natasha, years ago, took away the only thing that that man loved. I think he intends to do the same to her." Fury said with a knowing look.

"Natasha and I aren't-" Clint started, running a hand through his hair. If Fury knew about them, they could both get fired. But, then again, they weren't much of anything anymore.

"Aren't what?"

"Aren't anything." Clint finished exasperatedly with a shrug.

"No offense, but you don't fly halfway around the world and risk your life for nothing." Fury pointed out, the two of them could be so dense it was obscene.

* * *

"Fuck." Natasha cursed under her breath in Russian as she slowly came to, her head throbbing. She tried to move, but her muscles refused to cooperate, the most she could do was turn her head and even that felt like she'd been hit repeatedly with a heavy object.

Everything had went perfectly according to plan, but there were so many variables she couldn't account for. She should've waited, should've taken her time but she was angry and headstrong and now, she was fucked.

When she got to her safehouse, Natasha made short work of the intel she'd been given. She'd combed through it all at least half a dozen times before starting to make any plans, she was meticulous and thorough, this never should have gone down this way. Except, it had.

She started to get feeling back into her body, wiggling her toes and her fingers, but she couldn't do much more, she was strapped down onto a cold, hard, metal table. Pulling at her restraints, pain jolted through her. She looked down, feeling grateful she was still in her tactical, even if most of her weapons had been removed, and remembered where the pain was coming from. She'd taken two rounds earlier, one through her left shoulder, and the other through her right side. Natasha counted herself lucky that neither bullet strayed farther and caused any real damage, though it still hurt like hell.

"Welcome back to the land of living." Drawled a voice from behind her, Drakov.

"Is that really the best line you could come up with?" Natasha shot back, pulling at her restraints again.

"You're not really in a position to be patronizing me." He snapped, walking around to where he could see her.

"You don't exactly scare me, love." She replied and was met with the back of a hand cracking against her face.

"I wouldn't talk if I were you." He threatened, but his words felt hollow to Natasha.

"Why? So I could sit here while you talk at me instead. No thanks." He slapped her again and Natasha's mouth filled with blood, she swallowed it. "Because if you really had it in you to kill me, you would've done it by now."

"Don't test me, Natasha. I've brought you here not to kill you, not yet."

"Oh yes, I have to suffer first. Just as you have." She finished in a mocking tone, her hit her again, but the effects diminished with each slap.

"Did you read my letter?" He asked, adjusting the table until she was upright.

"I did not." She said somewhat confidently, to be honest, in this whole mess she'd forgotten entirely about the letter she found the night of the auction, or fake auction that is.

"Such a shame, you would've found the contents most interesting. It had some things to do with your parents in there, amongst others."

"My parents?" Now he had her attention. She always knew she must've had parents, that was science, but nobody had ever mentioned them or what might have happened to them.

"Yes. Good people your parents, shame what happened to them." Natasha was facing a large monitor, on the screen he pulled up a grainy photo of a man and a woman in a hospital holding a baby. The photos changed to the couple laughing, and changed again to them holding a much larger baby.

"That's not you there, if that's what you're wondering." He cut through the thousands of thoughts running through her mind. "They had another girl, before you, her name was Lidiya."

"So I had a sister?" Natasha asked, confused as to what it all meant.

"You did indeed. But, one wasn't enough for your parents, they wanted a second child. However, your mother had gotten quite sick after Lidiya was born, she couldn't get pregnant again, not without help, so they agreed to become IVF trial parents back when it was still new."

"Sorry, but I don't understand why any of this is important." She admitted, any of this information was sort of irrelevant, she'd resigned herself to the fact that she'd never have a family years ago.

"Well, it was right around the time I started human trials." He told her with a smirk, waiting until the information sink in.

"No." She whispered in shock, he had to be lying. There was no what he was telling her was true.

"Yes." He confirmed with a sick smile. "I created you, Natasha. You were mine from the very start, before your first breath you belonged to me."

Natasha pulled violently against the straps holding her down, wanting nothing more than to wrap her hand around his throat. This wasn't true, couldn't be true.

"You're lying." She practically spit, desperately wretching to get free.

"That's more in line with you, Natasha. You are the Red Rooms own creation, the most bright and beautiful of them all. Your parents wouldn't give you up though. They even tried to run, not fast enough it seems. Shame we had to kill of them just to get to you. You see, Natasha, I created you, and I can end you too."

Just as he finished his sentence, an alarm sounded and she heard the faint sounds of gunfire from outside the house. Both Natasha's and the doctor's eyes snapped to the door.

"I've got nothing here, Fury. I don't know what you want me to say. She's good." Bobbi sighed into the phone. She'd followed up every lead she could drum up and nothing had panned out. Wherever Natasha was, she doesn't want to be found.

"I want you to say something useful Mockingbird." He snapped frustratedly.

"She got into a black sedan with another woman shortly after arriving at the airport, where she got out, no clue. I ran facial recognition on the other woman but I've come up empty." She explained.

"I want you on the first flight back here."

"Will do." She agreed, hanging up the phone. Whatever Natasha was up to, she'd gone to great lengths to keep it from any of them.

"Let me guess, Bobbi's got nothing." Clint taunted Fury as he slammed his phone down.

"You'd better hope we find something and find it damn quick. We know where Drakov is, thanks to Harris and Romanoff, if I don't hear anything from her in the next 24 hours I'm sending in a strike team."

The door frame shattered as it was kicked in and a look of total fear swept across the doctor's face as he backed into the monitor. Natasha craned her neck to see their new adversary, pulling again at her restraints, but she couldn't break them. The once clotted bullet holes tore open again at her exertion and new blood began running down her skin.

Suddenly, she felt the straps release and she was falling face-first towards the ground. She put her hands out to catch herself but her efforts proved unnecessary as a hand wound around her waist and caught her, keeping her on her feet. Her hands reflexively went to the arm holding her to steady herself and she found that is was cold.

"James." She hissed, pushing herself away from him when she'd regained her balance.

"What are you doing here?" Drakov demanded, practically quaking before the two assassins.

"I've come to get my best girl, of course." James responded shooting Natasha a wink. "Like to do the honors?" He asked, deftly tossing her a knife that she caught with ease.

"Why?" Drakov didn't understand. "Why her? She left, she turned her back on you, on all of you. Why do you save her and punish me. You killed my daughter because I left, you murdered an innocent girl to punish me, but you save her? What makes her so fucking special?" He was shouting now, near tears.

"You of all people should know what makes her so special." James pointed out. "So, Talia, are you going to finish the mission or shall I?"

Natasha's eyes darted from James to Drakov, and she shifted uneasily on her feet. She wanted nothing more than to kill Drakov, to finish what she felt she'd started eight years ago. But, so did James and she didn't want to give into him.

But blood was now pouring from her wounds and she was angry at the man who saw fit to play with her life as if it meant nothing. She stalked towards the shrinking man and grabbed him by the throat.

"I made you." He reminded her, steeling his voice.

"You made a monster then, Dr. Frankenstein." She sneered, placing the blade against the hollow of his throat. "And I am not yours." She finished, sliding the blade effortlessly across his throat, blood spilling down the blade and her hands and for a moment, she felt at peace. Until James reminded her of his presence.

"Just like old times, eh? It's good to see you." He said, tucking the blade back away as Natasha handed it back to him.

"Wish I could say the same." Natasha said grimly as she examined her injuries.

"I wish you could do." He muttered, walking over to her. "Let me take a look at those." He readjusted the table until it was horizontal again and motioned for sit.

"I'm fine." She waved him off heading for the stairs.

"I know, but do you think any airport anywhere will let you walk around covered in blood?" She sighed, he had a point, something had to be done, and reluctantly took a seat on the metal table.

They didn't speak or make eye contact as he unzipped the top of her suit to expose the bullet wounds, cleaned them and removed the bullet that was still in her shoulder, and stitched her back up. Natasha was, as ever, silent through the pain.

"Why are you here?" She asked as she pulled her arms back through her suit and zipped it up.

"Two hearts, remember? You die, I die." Natasha and James both sighed, they knew they would never be free of one another.

"It's not something I'm like to forget. I've got to ask you something."

"Anything."

"Was I always going to end up there?" Natasha asked, thinking about everything Drakov had told her. James hesitated, but answered.

"Yeah, Natasha, you were. All the girls were. Are." Natasha didn't know what was more unnerving the past or the present.

"And there's something else." He added before she could walk away.

"Yeah?" She was curious on what he had to say, he was acting strangely, not at all like himself.

"I'm sorry about the way things went between us the last time we saw each other." He looked away from her.

"What's up, James? This isn't like you." Natasha asked. By all accounts she should hate him, after years of abuse and suffering, she should hate him. But she didn't. Somehow she always knew he was just as much of a slave to them as she was, only she had the drive for freedom where he did not.

"They say I've been compromised." He said with a bitter laugh. "The only reason they let me come after you today is because they're going to clean-slate me."

"Shit." Natasha felt her stomach drop.

"Let's get out of here." He said, storming out of the room and up the stairs, apparently they were in the basement. Natasha followed him to his car in silence.

"Speaking of compromised, your safehouse here is. Your stuff is in the back, better change and I'll take you the airport." James sounded like himself again, his voice confident and strong, deceptively unyielding.

Natasha opened up the back seat and dug through her bags, she knew she packed something respectable, she just had to find it. A few minutes later she climbed into the passenger seat and they set off, again in silence. Neither of them knew what to say to the other.

"This is it then, the end of the line, yeah?" James asked as he pulled up to international departures. She could think of a thousand reasons to be angry with him, but couldn't make herself angry with him if she wanted to. He just made her sad, made her regret a lot of things she'd said and done.

"The end, yeah." She agreed, shoving open her car door. She grabbed her things, thinking of nothing else, nothing better to say.

"Natalia, wait." He got out to follow her, grabbing her bag he turned her around and kissed her, pulling her against his chest. He kissed her deeply and softy, with all the gentleness and respect he'd never shown her before.

"Since it's the last time I'm like to see you." He said with a small smile as he pulled away. "You always did deserve better than me."

"And you deserve better than them." She told him, hoping she could sway him from going back. If she could be free, why couldn't he?

"After the things I did to you? I don't think so, but I appreciate the sentiment. Goodbye Natasha."

"Goodbye, James." She called after him. Watching him drive away, she was left with the uneasy feeling that this wasn't the end for them; no ending for them could be so peaceful, so calm.

She shoved all her thoughts aside as she looked to get home. Stealing a phone, she called home to base, Coulson not Fury, she'd deal with him later. When she touched down on the runway in NYC, she had every intention of going home and going to bed, longing for this seemingly endless day to be over.

Instead she found herself outside Clint's door, knocking hesitantly.

She heard the creaking of the floorboards as Clint walked to the door and the slight click as he pressed the barrel of a gun against the wood.

"You can put the gun away, Clint. It's just me." Natasha called tiredly. Clint opened the door halfway, waiting for her to say something.

"I know I shouldn't be here, that you probably don't want me here, but I've had an impossibly weird and shitty day and I could really use my best friend." She stumbled through her sentence nervously, hoping Clint could forgive her for just one night.

"Come on in." He said, opening the door completely.


	17. Chapter 17

**No school tomorrow so I decided to stay up hell late just to finish this chapter for you guys! The latter half of this chapter is definitely on the M rated side, so you can weigh that however you like. Hope you like it, please review!**

"I know I shouldn't be here, that you probably don't want me here, but I've had an impossibly weird and shitty day and I could really use my best friend." Natasha's voice was uncharacteristically unsteady, Clint noticed, eyeing her in mild suspicion. He didn't fail to notice the right side of her face was bruised and swollen or that she held herself up stiffly and awkwardly compared to her normal fluid grace.

Part of him really wanted to just shut the door in her face, just seeing her made his temper spike but, on the other hand, he knew Natasha and she wouldn't be here unless it was big. It took a lot for Natasha to swallow her pride.

He stepped aside and opened the door to her.

"Come on in." He gestured inside, unsure what would happen if he did let her in.

"Thanks." She muttered, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as she stepped across the threshold.

"I was just about to make some dinner, you hungry?" Clint offered, going back to the kitchen.

"Yeah, sure." Natasha replied, following him and taking a seat on one of the stools at the island.

"So, how badly did I fuck up?" She asked dropping her head into her hands after the silence that settled between them became agonizing. Clint laughed and slid a plate in front of her, leaning on his forearms in front of his own plate across from her.

"Royally, Nat." He told her outright.

"At least one of us is honest." She said taking a bite of the grilled cheese Clint had handed her. "This is fucking amazing." She commended, it had been too long since she'd eaten last.

"Thanks, but you didn't come here just for dinner." It wasn't so much as a nudge, but a shove towards a conversation that he knew Natasha did not ever want to have. She sighed and reluctantly pulled an envelope out of her bag, the one Drakov had left for, and slapped it down on the counter between them.

"What's this?" He picked it up, turning it in hands.

"I don't know." She shrugged.

"N.R?" He looked at her but she seemed just as confused as he was.

"Drakov left the drive on the patsy as bait, yeah, but he also left this for me. I haven't opened it yet." She said by way of explanation.

"You said that the drive was the only thing you found."

"I lied." She admitted, with a half-hearted shrug, Clint wasn't surprised. "Open it." She urged and Clint realized something: this was Natasha's olive branch.

Cautiously, Clint opened the envelope, not sure about what was inside or about how Natasha would react to it. The first things he pulled out were a couple of old photos, a family with two small girls, flipping through them he could tell, even as a toddler, that one of them was Natasha. He slid them across to Natasha so she could look at them and took out the stack of papers folded inside. Inside he found a birth certificate for Natalia Alianovna Romanova born June 3rd, 1984.

"I think this makes you a Gemini." Clint said jokingly, handing it to her.

"What are you then?" She asked, scanning the document.

"September 22nd, I'm a Virgo." He said, turning his attention back the papers in his hands. "Not that I believe any of that bullshit, mind you." He tagged on as an after thought. The next few documents were a series of death certificates, all Romanovas, all died the same day: December 18th, 1987. Cause of death: asphyxiation in a housefire. There were four in total. What followed was a series of newspaper clippings shortly after the fire, all claiming no survivors. All wrong.

"Fourth body never found." He muttered, going back and forth between the pages, trying to piece all the information together. When Natasha reached over and took the papers from him, Clint turned his attention to the last few papers, a stapled packed out of a redacted file. There wasn't much he could read or understand of it, but he could get some information from the blacked-out mess. The names of Natasha's parents appeared often, mostly the mother's, followed by a lot of science talk he didn't understand. The documents were all watermarked with the Red Room seal.

"This is weird, Nat. Take a look at this." He handed her the papers. "Red Room docs, all involving your parents, all over a year before you were born."

"Fuck." Natasha sighed, shoving the papers away from her.

"What?" Clint was sure she knew what this all meant now.

"Everything they said was true. Every goddamn word." She practically spit, seething. She dropped her head into her hands, trying to calm herself down as she felt her pulse and breathing quicken, she clenched her fists, flexed all the muscles in her body as she tried to get a grip. Everything she had been told her entire life, everything she'd ever believed about herself, about her life, was a lie. The whole damn thing.

"Who told you what?" He asked, setting the papers down in front of her. Natasha snapped.

"Fuck!" She swore again, standing up Natasha swept her arm across the countertop, sending papers flying to floor along with a few plates and glasses that shattered as they hit the wooden floors.

"Hey, Nat tell me what's going on?" Clint all but ordered, standing upright himself.

"What's going on is that I just found out that I am nothing but the Red Room's little fucking science experiment from day fucking one!" She was shouting now. "That I was never anything more than a lab rat, than a piece of goddamn property that belonged to the Red Room before I was even fucking born!" She buried her hands in her hair and pulled, hard, focusing on the pain on her scalp to temper her anger.

The collection of the documents suddenly made sense. The one medical thing Clint had understood in the redacted papers was a mention of IVF testing, and if the documents were Red Room, that meant Natasha was an IVF baby created by them, for them. And her parents had been killed for it too, another child had too, her sister.

"Shit." Clint muttered, rubbing his forehead. "Natasha-"

"I should go." Natasha snapped, interrupting him as she turned away from him.

"No, no, no." Clint stepped around the island, grabbing her wrist as she walked towards the door. "Don't you fucking dare, Natasha."

"I shouldn't have come here at all." She insisted, trying to pull away from him. Clint tightened his grip and forced her to look up at him.

"You can't run from this, Natasha, or from me. If you leave now, you're going to do something you'll regret. I can't let you do that." He grabbed both her arms so they were squarely facing each other, Clint felt her relax ever so slightly.

"I don't know what the hell I'm going to do, what I even can do." She sounded tired, exhausted.

"About this? I don't know either, but it's not a problem you can solve tonight. Tonight, now, we are going to forget about the mess and you and I are going to go take a long, hot shower, and you are going to get plenty of sleep." His hands slid down from her arms to her hands as he spoke, stepping backwards towards the bathroom, he tugged gently on her hands. Natasha hesitated, as she always did, but allowed Clint to lead her off, gently shutting the door behind them both.

She stood in front of the mirror, gripping the sink until her knuckles matched the white porcelain, eyes darting back and forth between herself and Clint. Natasha felt nervous and sick, it was easy to dismiss what Drakov had told her and what James had confirmed, but now, there was hard proof staring at her in boldfaced ink. There was no denying anything now.

"Hey." Clint's voice got her attention as he turned the water on then placed his hands lightly on her waist, his lips brushing against her ear. "None of this changes who you are, Nat." He whispered against her. "You're the same woman you've always been."

She loosened her grip on the sink and rocked back on her heels, falling back into him.

"I don't even know who she is anymore." She admitted, letting her head fall back onto Clint's shoulder. "I feel like I'm slipping away, losing myself. Again."

"You'll find her. You always do." He assured with a gentle squeeze. "Come on." She sighed, pulling away from him. Clint stepped back and dragged his shirt up over his head and letting it fall lazily to the floor beside him. Reaching back for Natasha, he unzipped her skirt until the fabric fell from her waist and pooled on the floor beneath her as she pulled her shirt off as well, tossing the loose grey fabric off to the side.

"Rough time there then, yeah?" Clint asked, his fingers skimming ever so lightly across the stitches on her side and shoulder.

"No rougher than normal, could've been worse." Could've been a lot worse if James hadn't shown up, or decided to play things differently than he had.

"I'm glad at least somebody had your back." He wished it had been him, but at least she wasn't alone.

"How'd you-?"

"Know? The stitching is too straight and clean to be self-done. Especially by you." He teased, nudging her.

"Hey, my patch jobs may not be pretty but they work." She defended, nudging him back. He chuckled as he unclasped her bra and she shrugged out of her bra, letting it join the mess of clothes at their feet.

Natasha surprised Clint by turning to face him, her hands deftly undoing the buckle on his belt and sliding through the loops, tossing it aside.

"Plus," She said, starting on the buttons of his jeans. "It's not like your work is any better." Clint was working very hard to keep his face straight and his body still with Natasha so close to him. Even bruised and battered and full of bullet wounds, she was beautiful.

"You got me there." He admitted as Natasha slid her hands into his loosened jeans, letting them rest against his hip bones. She'd missed this.

"Shall we?" Clint asked, nodding his head in the direction of the shower as he stepped out of his jeans. Natasha bit her bottom lip but smiled, pulling back the curtain and climbed over the edge of the tub with Clint not far behind. Biting her lip was a rare habit with Natasha and one Clint never could find a motive for; he couldn't tell if it was because she was nervous or happy or just thinking, maybe it was all of the above. It was just one of those things about her that never failed to captivate him.

The water was hot. Too hot almost, it stung as it splashed against Natasha's cool skin for the first time and Clint shuddered, pulling the curtain back closed behind them. The little clang of the metal curtain ring crashing into the tiled wall echoed in the small room.

Natasha stood back and closed her eyes, the hot water burning her scalp and run down her face, the water washing away any and all thoughts as it trickled into her eyelashes, off her lips, and worked its way down, warming every inch of her. Smoothing all her hair back, she wrung the water from her long locks to hear the heavy splash of all the water hitting the bottom at once, only to have her hair saturated again by the running water.

"Let me." Clint said, covering her hand as she reached for the shampoo. She hesitated, but withdrew her hand when he nudged her, signaling for her to turn around. Closing her eyes again, Natasha found herself surprisingly comfortable and content as he worked the soap through her hair, his fingers massaging her scalp with the perfect pressure. It was a strange, new sort of intimacy that overcame them amongst the water and steam. Natasha had always been irrationally attached to her hair, she loved the waves and the deep, red color. It had become a trademark, as much a part of her identity as her voice or her walk.

Clint loved Natasha's hair, absolutely loved it. He never missed how her hair swayed when she walked or caught the sunlight, or when she absently curled it around her slender fingers. Though, this was a first, running his hands through it himself he felt her relax, surrendering part of himself over to him. Clint took his time, running over every inch of her scalp and down the long, silken strands, the loose hairs gathering between his fingers. He turned her around again to rinse her hair out, unable to get enough of this feeling of her. Natasha looked up at him and Clint felt a burning intensity in her, a desire that ran like a current just beneath her skin that made her entire body thrum with the beat of her heart.

"I don't understand you." Natasha admitted, her quiet voice almost lost in the noise around them. "You should be angry, you should yell, you shouldn't want me here. Why aren't you angry?"

"Natasha," His hands stilled as he buried them in her hair, letting them rest as he held her. "Trust me, I'm angry at you. I'm pissed. And that anger's going to come out soon, I can guarantee you that. But, right now, I'm just glad you're here. That you didn't walk out on me for good."

Natasha felt her chest tighten, his words stealing the breath from her lungs. After everything she's done, after every word, after every lie, he still wanted her. And she wanted him. Every inch of him, every part of him, it was an aching desire, so acutely intense that it hurt. _Fuck it_, she thought, throwing away every ounce of control and restraint she had, pulling Clint hard against her by his bony hips as she kissed him.

Natasha kissed Clint hard, with almost a year of untempered anger and longing and regret spilling up out of her, pouring herself into him. Clint's grip on her tightened, pulling her into him even deeper and feeling everything Natasha had left unsaid, might always leave unsaid. But, that was the thing with them, they didn't have to say anything, not ever. They were liars and killers working for even better liars and killers, words became obsolete when you turned them into weapons. But actions, actions carried weight, carried meaning and truths that their words could not or would not. And Natasha was not just speaking the truth, but shouting it, begging Clint to hear her, to understand her, to forgive her.

He did.

Clint wrapped his hands around her waist, picking her up with surprising ease, like she weighed nothing and Natasha wrapped her legs tightly around his waist letting him back her against the wall. She gasped against him as the cold tile shocked her hot body, goosebumps sprouting down her back and chest, shivering slightly against Clint who smiled at her surprise.

He kissed again, a hot and needy kiss that made Natasha shake with her own desire. He pulled away from her only when his chest ached, his eyes nearly black with arousal only worsening the ache between her thighs. Natasha let her head fall back, baring her neck to him and Clint seized the opportunity to kiss, suck, and bite every inch of her exposed neck and chin, relishing in the tiny whimpers and moans he elicited from her.

They had absently found a rhythm between them, the friction of his hips right against her forcing her to abandon any hope of rational thought, her mind zeroed in on only him, on every touch, every kiss, every sharp but gentle nip at her skin. His hands slid down her body, gripping the curve of her ass tightly as he picked her up again, turning them and pressing her up against the opposite wall under the spray of the shower.

Natasha moaned in protest when Clint unhooked her legs, setting her back down her turned her so she faced the wall, loving the way she cursed in Russian under her breath as her sensitive nipples his the cold tile wall, a sharp contrast to the hot water pouring down her back. Clint paused, gathering his control before he wrapped his hands around her, on teasing her hardened nipples as the other brushed lightly along her inner thigh. Natasha's breath hitched then became heavy and labored under him, pressing her hips back into him, loving how she felt him tense up, working hard to stay in control now.

"Fuck!" He cursed through gritted teeth as Natasha pushed back against him even harder, running her dripping arousal along the length of his. Clint's hand shot from her chest to her hair and he yanked back hard, pulling her to stand upright as he slid two fingers inside her. The suddenness of the pleasure and pain overtook Natasha, forcing a loud cry from her lips. Self-consciously, Natasha bit her lip to silence herself but Clint sooned pulled another heady moan from her silence when he curled his fingers inside her.

Clint relished every moment of having Natasha under him, relished every sound that escaped her carefully guarded lips, every brush of her fingers as she scrambled to find purchase, her knees weakening, threatening to fall out from under her as she became overwhelmed with pleasure.

"Tell me what you want, baby." Clint's breathed hotly into her ear, she shuddered beneath him with a long moan. "C'mon Natasha, tell me what you want."

"God, I want you, Clint." Her voice was tight and desperate, his name falling from her lips never sounded sweeter.

"You want me to do what, Nat?" He pressed, slowing the pace of his hand, his fingers moving agonizingly slowly, driving Natasha crazy. She wrapped both her arms around his neck, her flexible back arching gracefully off his chest, she delicately liked the shell of his ear as she pulled his head forward towards hers.

"I want you to make me come, Clint." She practically begged. "And I want inside me, Clint. I need you so fucking bad, Clint." He almost came at her words, her rich, sultry voice nearly driving him over the edge. She knew it too, she knew exactly how to drive him crazy like he did with her.

Clint picked up his pace again, working his fingers in an out of her adding his second hand to play with her clit. In moments he felt her tense and she was close, so close her fingers tightened in his hair, pulling on the short blond strands as she came with a heavy sigh.

Before Natasha had recovered from her orgasm, Clint pushed him own aching arousal inside her, burying himself in her. Natasha came again as he entered her, building off her first orgasm she came harder, with a force that made her knees give out and ripped a scream from her throat. Her scream of pure pleasure, of pure ecstasy, made Clint's head swim and grip her waist tight to keep himself from coming.

He set a slow pace, dragging out her pleasure and his as they found a steady rhythm against each other. Natasha urged him on, taking control as she ground against him until they were both dangerously close to the edge again. Clint felt Natasha falter, her body becoming rigid against against his and he abruptly pulled out.

"Fuck" Natasha spit through gritted teeth. He quickly turned her back to face him, picking her back up and pressing her against the wall, pushing back into her before she could get another word out.

"I want to see your face when you come, Natasha." It wasn't long before he felt Natasha tense up again, her legs pulling him even deeper into her she came, pulling Clint over with her.

They half-hazardly dried each other off when Clint snapped the running water off, even now it was like they still couldn't get enough of each other. He toweled off Natasha's hair gently along with the rest of her before he carried her to his room, surprised that she'd even let him do it. They collapsed into a tangled mess on his bed, both still running their hands freely over the other, leaving a kiss where they could.

"If you're going to fuck me like that, maybe we should fight more often." Natasha joked as she curled up beside him, placing a kiss on his sternum.

"I'm voting for the sex without the argument." He replied, kissing the crown of her head, her wet hair hanging down, tickling his bare skin.

"Deal." She kissed his collar bone this time, smiling against his skin before looking up at him. "Time for the truth yeah?"

"I'd appreciate it." He said before capturing her mouth in another searing kiss.

"I'll start from the beginning."


	18. Chapter 18

Natasha hesitated, not quite meeting Clint's eyes as she tried to find precisely the right words to explain herself and her recent actions. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, deciding on her words then backing out at the last second, and her brow furrowed in concentration, her head quirked ever so slightly to the side as she thought. Clint didn't speak and after several minutes she got up and left Clint's room without a word.

"Natasha!" Clint called after her a few moments after she'd left, sitting up fully now, with a sort of reluctant nervousness in his voice.

"Take it easy, champ." She replied smoothly as she returned, having gone only to put on her shirt and underwear that were left on the bathroom floor. She wrung her hair out again, not caring that she was letting the water form a small damp spot on the bedroom carpet.

"Can you blame me?" He asked with a shrug, relaxing as Natasha sat and perched on the edge of the bed next to him.

"I don't know where to start." She opened up the top drawer of Clint's nightstand and was pleasantly surprised to find a pack of cigarettes and a lighter she'd left in there months ago when things were still good between them. "You kept these?" She asked as she grabbed them.

"Never had a reason to get rid of them, I guess." He followed her, putting on a pair of sweatpants as they went, out onto the fire escape.

"Except for the fact that you hate that I smoke."

"I never sai-"

"You do know what I do for a living don't you?"

"Okay, fair point. But, I wouldn't say hate exactly."

"That's only because you're nicer than I am."

"Not exactly a high bar you're setting there, Nat." He joked, nudging her playfully as she tried to light her cigarette and causing her to miss. She chuckled as she went back to light it again but Clint could make out the faint tremor in her hands that betrayed her apparent ease.

"So what's the story behind that anyways." He asked, hoping that starting on a less serious topic might make her feel more comfortable.

"This?" She asked, flicking the ash over the railing; both of them watched the grey-white flakes fall until they were out of sight (though for Clint that was longer than it was for Natasha). "Well, there's not really a specific reason, it was just a matter of circumstance I guess." She shrugged, her mind wander back to the memories of her tumultuous teenage years.

"It seems odd that they'd let you guys smoke considering how restrictive the rest of your life was." The slight emphasis on _they _meant the Red Room, a subject largely regarded as being off limits for the both of them.

"No, it wasn't' there." Natasha started to explain, shaking her head. "This was in my post-Red Room, pre-SHIELD years. Well, the first year. I, uh, didn't come to the states right off the bat. I'm not sure how much of the early stuff you guys had intel on, I didn't catch you coming at me until about a year and half after I started on my own. But, when I ran, I ran to Paris."

"Paris?" Natasha spoke enough languages, and learned them easily enough, to go anywhere in the world. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to Clint, at the moment, on why she wouldn't go farther from the country she fled.

"I'm Russian, and I live in New York, but my heart, if I ever had one, is in France."

"You know, I wouldn't have pegged you as a socialist." He joked.

"Two words, man: free healthcare." Natasha took a long pause as she considered telling him more of this story. In the end, she felt as if she owed him something for the past few months. She knew it wouldn't really fix the problems between them completely, but maybe it could start.

And this story was the one she kept nearest to her, not because of the things she had done but because of the things she'd felt. Learning, training, working, they were all compulsory, she never made her own decisions; even the food she ate was dictated for her by someone else. When she left it was her first taste of freedom, real freedom, she always held onto that experience and those memories very tightly.

Natasha turned and leaned against the railing, shifting to get comfortable as she spoke.

"So I was 17-ish when I left. I had been trained to be a killer in the Red Room, and was good at it too, as you well know. However, in training me to be a killer, they taught me the skills to be something else entirely, something that I've always preferred: a thief. I'm basically just a glorified grifter under all the bullshit. After all, isn't that what being a spy is?"

"So you went to Paris to become a thief?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I needed a distraction to take my mind off the pain of the Red Room, plus I just lost the entire network I operated within when I burned that bridge. There's no better place in the entire world to start a criminal network than in Paris. The city of light can also be quite dark in places, and it's crawling with all kinds of lowlifes making mischief and other general skullduggery."

"Skullduggery?"

"I like the word. So I went to Paris and started working. And as in everything, you start meeting people in the same line of work. I'd had more training at 17 than most of these people would get in their entire life, so I could spot them as easily as they could spot a tourist. I made a lot of friends early on passing along skills and offering advice so I quickly moved up, putting together small crews and running basic jobs, pickpocketing and the like. I took the whole thing one step at a time, moving to B and E's, then full blown cons. Friends multiplied, as did the money, and soon no living person in Paris was safe from us, we were robbing everybody from sales clerks to senators.

I wasn't killing then, I did some maiming on occasion and still used what I think they'd call 'excessive force' nowadays more often than I'd like to admit, but I wasn't killing."

"Just honest stealing then, yeah?"

"As honest as is comes. So that's, in a brief nutshell, my first year out. It didn't last, as you can see, but I loved every second of it. Most of my private network, allies and contacts in intelligence and the like, as a result of this, are French."

"So why and how'd it end? It sounds like things were really working."

"They were, but in any type of organized crime, you make enemies. I was in this sort of relationship at the time, and when they pushed too hard against her to get to me, I killed more than one of them in retaliation. It's not a lie to say there is honor amongst thieves, and killing breached that code of honor against allies and enemies alike. But to me, at the time, it felt so natural, I felt like I was right to do it, but I was the sorry minority. Every reputation takes hits, and I could've salvaged mine, but it made me realize that I could never be simply a thief. Whatever I was, whatever I did, I was always going to be a killer."

"Nat, that's not-"

"It is true, you know and I know it. I know it because I'm self aware, you know it because you see it in yourself. I didn't belong there, with them, I knew I belonged with those who worked much deeper in the shadows of the criminal world we live in. And so I left, moved on. That's when I took up all that private contracting work that got me on your radar.

The split was amicable, we all agreed that it was for the best on both ends, but I did a lot for all of them and they still come through when I have need for them."

"Did you have a name?" Clint asked eagerly, sometime during her story he'd moved from leaning against the thin railing to precariously perched on top of it.

"What?"

"Like a nickname, did they call you anything special. No offense, but Natasha's not exactly a French name, not even close." Clint had a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, but opted only to ask the trivial ones. The fact that she shared this story, even if only a part of it, with him voluntarily was an enormous step for the both of them.

"I earned more of a title than a name. They called me _La Reine des Coeurs_." She remembered the first time they'd called her that. They'd been running several confidence games at once and Natasha was the centerpiece of all of them, managing to have four or five convinced she was in love with them all at once. From then the name just stuck and it was definitely fitting for her as well considering the kinds of roles she generally played in their schemes.

"The Queen of Hearts." Clint found the moniker funnier that he probably should've. "That's wonderful."

"C'mon, now it's your turn." Natasha quickly turned the focus over to him to stop him from asking her anymore questions.

"My turn for what?"

"Someone, somewhere has had to have given you some stupid nickname." Clint smiled, but it quickly faded as his mind wandered back into the past. Back to a time that Clint talked about as often as Natasha talked about the Red Room, which is to say never.

"You okay?" Natasha asked when Clint didn't respond.

"Yeah, fine." He assured her. "Just haven't thought about it in a long time." He spent the next minute or so absorbed in the details of the apartments across the way, a training exercise from his youth that taught him to see the tiny details; the digital clock in a darkened bedroom told him it was just past ten.

"Well, Hawkeye was a nickname originally." He started. "My brother used to call me that when we were kids."

"Your brother?" Natasha asked, half-heartedly trying to mask her surprise.

"Yeah I had an older brother. Barney Barton." He slipped off his perch and sat on the hard metal floor across from Natasha as she lit another cigarette.

"Had?" His use of the past tense didn't escape Natasha. "Did he die with your parents?" The question wasn't exactly sensitive, but Clint wasn't exactly delicate. Both of them had a way of ignoring all that socially-learned bullshit surrounding death and loss and get right to the heart of the matter.

"No, he met a worse end." Clint took a deep breath and ruffled his hair, a habit he picked up from Natasha. "I was four when my parents died, car accident, so I don't remember a whole lot about them. Bits and pieces, yeah, but no real, solid memories. Barney was nine at the time, it was a lot harder for him to deal with the whole thing I guess since he knew, and remembered, so much more than I did."

"Are you sure you want me to hear this?" Natasha interrupted before he could continue. He hadn't looked up at her once, his eyes shifting from his hands to the street below, his eyes darting back and forth rapidly, gathering every single detail possible. It was interesting how, in times of stress and discomfort, they both fell back on their training to keep themselves in control.

"I don't know, I never really talked about him before. I told Bobbi about him, of course, but not really anything about what happened to him, to us. It's not that I didn't trust her, I'd trust her with my life ten times over, but I don't know, I thought maybe she'd see me differently if she knew. Which, I gather, is not entirely unlike how you feel."

"Spot on, Wonderboy." Natasha's affectionate nickname for him never failed to make him smile. "And if I have to say it, I will: I am the last person on God's entire goddamn, sun-filled, green Earth that would ever hold your past against you."

"I know, Nat. And I hope you know that that's a street that goes both ways."

"I'm learning, yeah." She finished her cigarette, and settled in to listen to Clint, giving him her full attention.

"Okay so here are Barney and I, no parents and no other family that want us, shuffled off into the foster system without a second thought. At first couples would take both of us, out of pity more than anything really. But, people only really want the cute, undamaged kids, the kids that don't remember how their parents died. They don't care for the ones who do remember so much, they make things harder. We didn't stay anywhere for long. Some families were nice enough, they'd try and help him. Some families weren't so nice, and I'm sure I don't have to get into the details for you to know what that means.

Either way, we'd always get returned in the end. Returned, like we were nothing more than objects to any of these people. Anyways, Barney developed a reputation as a problem kid there while I was still young enough to be considered 'prime real estate' so eventually people would only take me, separate me from my brother. That didn't sit well with either of us, Barney lashed out more, and so did I. I didn't want a family if it meant leaving my brother, he was the only thing I had left. The only person since my parents that actually cared about me, so I would act out and shit like that when I was in foster homes just so I'd get sent back to Barney. I was such an angry kid, I didn't understand why my parents died, why nobody wanted us, why they kept trying to take me away from my brother, I didn't understand any of it."

"What about Barney, how'd he feel about this whole thing?"

"Barney was always the more temperate of the two of us. I got angry about the whole thing, but he didn't. People never really returned Barney because he was violent or anything, that was all me, they didn't want him because he was depressed and nobody wanted a sad kid. Where'd you fall as a kid, sad or angry?"

"Scared, mostly. I lived my childhood in fear, I had focus on survival, not on feeling to make it through. I'm angry about it more retrospectively than anything." Natasha tried to think of a time when she'd had any strong feeling or emotion growing up, she mostly recalled the pain of it, the fear she learned to mask and suffer silently through.

"That's, wow, that's gotta be tough." She shrugged, as if it was something easy or simple when they both knew that it was anything but. Clint couldn't imagine being so focused on survival that young, he never had to really wonder if he was going to live or die until much later.

"You good?" Natasha asked when Clint didn't continue for some time.

"Yeah, I'm good." He assured her before continuing his story. "About 2 years after we had first been put into the system, I was taken into a foster home and Barney wasn't. I never learned how he got the information, but he found out where I was and knew it wasn't too far from him. So he broke out, left the foster home and came for me.

We had been taken earlier that month to the circus, it was in town for a few weeks. So when we ran, Barney took me there because I had loved it so much and we kind of stowed away on their way out of town, nobody noticed either of us until we were in Chicago and then, because carnies are just a collection of rejects that nobody wanted like us, they let us stay.

Barney was never really into it, he brought us there for me. Pretty much everything Barney ever did was for me, he was more a parent than a brother most of the time. The first year or so we just did odd jobs in and around the circus and Barney started learning archery from the guys who did it in the show. And me, I idolized Barney, I wanted to be just like him so they started training me too. It was a two person act, the 'master' trained Barney because he was older and his apprentice trained me since I was younger. And yeah Barney was older, but I had one thing he didn't."

"Your eyes." Natasha filled in for him.

"Spot on, Tasha. Yeah, even from that age my eyesight was insane and my trainer saw that, taught me how to use it, how to focus and how to see more than I had ever dreamed of. We both trained relentlessly, and by the time I was ten I could outshoot Barney anyday of the week. Not that he minded, really, his heart was never in it the way mine was.

I later learned that he didn't intend on staying with the circus long, not at all in fact, he just needed a place to take me until he could figure things out. But, he told me that when he saw how much I loved archery, he didn't have the heart to take me away from it. And he saw so much potential in me, to be great, he wanted to do everything he could to foster that potential."

"What about school, isn't that sort of required here?"

"Yeah, but it's not like they can enforce it if they can't find you. Barney taught himself almost everything, and he taught me.

And life was good. It didn't last for long though."

"What happened?"

"Barney was clinically depressed and never got the help he needed, the help he deserved. He fell into that sect of carnies he always told me to stay away from, the ones who drowned their problems in booze and drugs and I was too busy training to see it. Even if I had, I'm not sure what I would've done about it. As we got older, we grew apart. He spiraled further out of control while I got better and better at what I did. I stopped looking up to Barney and started looking up to my trainer. I never knew his real name, we only ever called him Trick Shot.

I gave up on Barney to become a better archer and it remains the biggest regret of my life."

"Are you sure you're just not being hard on yourself?"

"I'm not. Barney loved me, Trick Shot only used me. He was a manipulative bastard who used me to further his own ambition." Clint paused to take a deep breath, to keep his temper in check. "Barney was high all the fucking time those days and I felt like he had given up, abandoned me and I was, shit, 15 maybe? Trick Shot made me believe that he wanted what was best for me, made me follow his orders blindly, to this day I can't believe I was so fucking stupid that I bought his bullshit."

"You were a kid."

"I know, and yet, it doesn't make me feel any better about it. One day Trick Shot came to me, he said I would never be anybody so long as the 'Master', as they called him, was here. He convinced me that the Master was holding me back, stopping me from reaching my potential because he was jealous of what I could do. I remember being pissed at the Master, like I was being cheated, robbed of my opportunity to be great. It was exactly what Trick Shot wanted me to think. Barney saw this change in me and tried to get me to leave with him, he told me they had nothing left to offer me, that they were just using me. I didn't listen and so we stayed, him reluctantly, me so I could get what I thought I deserved. Well, the tension between the Master and Trick Shot eventually boiled over.

After a show they both went off, screaming at each other so the whole circus could here. The Master shouting that Trick Shot was going behind his back, usurping his authority and how dare he because he trained him, and Trick Shot yelling back that he was old and not as good as he used to be and that he was holding them all back. Their words, not unlike with you and me, came to blows. And yeah, the Master was old, but he was still better than Trick Shot. I saw the whole thing happen, the Master had Trick Shot pinned beneath him trying to reason with him, trying to get calm him down so they could talk, but Trick Shot was fucking psychotic, and there was no reason with him.

I didn't know what else to do, so I grabbed my bow, I had an arrow notched and was ready to let it fly, aimed directly at the Master's heart. Everything seemed to go still then, and the whole room went silent. Barney practically crashed into the tent then, strung out and looking half dead, looking for me and he saw me with my bow and just stood there, he was shocked, I could see it on his face, that his baby brother looked like he was about to shoot somebody.

Then there was Trick Shot, he never shut up and that night was no exception. He kept goading me, telling me to do it, telling me to put an end to the Master so we wouldn't be held back anymore. Barney was talking over him, telling me to put the bow down, to walk away from this mess. But I was so mad at Barney for leaving me that I didn't listen, I let my arrow loose."

"So you killed the Master for Trick Shot?" Natasha saw Clint tense up, his fist clenching hard until his knuckles were bones white.

"No, I didn't. Barney never wanted anything bad to happen to me, he never wanted to see me hurt, see me suffer. I don't think it was hard for him to see it, to see that I had made my decision to kill the Master, he could read me better than you can, Nat.

Barney stepped in front of that arrow."

"Fucking hell." Natasha ran her hand through her hair, floored by Clint's story that now felt more like a confession. No SHIELD Agent had a clean life, a nice childhood, but this was beyond fucked up.

"The first person I ever killed was my own fucking brother." Clint's fist lashed out and slammed into the railing, the whole fire escape shook with the force of it.

Natasha slowly, but without hesitation stood from where she had been sitting and knelt down in front of Clint, ignoring the pain in her knees as the metal grate bit into her skin, and placed a hand gently over his. He'd scraped the side of his hand on the metal, torn skin hanging on my just a thread, blood beginning to pool and roll down his wrist.

"Clint, hey, look at me." He'd looked away when she'd approached, but not before seen the regret, and the shame, and the pure self-loathing in his eyes. "Clint, please." It was a long moment before he finally did look up at her, tears welling in his blue-grey eyes.

"I'm sorry, Clint." Natasha's voice was barely a whisper. "I'm so sorry." He looked away from her again.

"It's not your fault, Natasha."

"I'm sorry I lied to you," His eyes snapped back to her, curiosity mingling in with the rest of the suite of emotions churning through him. "I'm sorry I pushed you away. I knew it would hurt you but I did it anyway because I am vindictive and selfish and cold and this, whatever the hell this is, fucking terrifies me. And I was wrong to never ask you about your past, I was wrong to pretend I didn't care about you because I don't know what or who I fucking am anymore but I know I don't want to lose you."

Clint didn't waste a moment, wrapping his arms tightly around Natasha's waist he pulled her into his lap, hugging her tightly against his chest. Natasha wound her arms around Clint's neck as he buried his face into her shoulder.

It was five years ago, almost to the day, that Clint had given her a new life, a better life. And it'd been a crazy five years, a wild ride of ups and downs, good times and bad, of firsts and lasts. And for the first time in five years, Clint cried. Whether it was for Natasha, for his brother, or both, he didn't even know. Now Natasha had never been one to give comfort, most often she was the cause of pain, even here. But as Clint's arms wrapped tighter around her, she simply pulled him closer to her too, as Clint had so often done for her.

"We're going to be okay." She whispered as she kissed his head, running a hand softly through his hair. "We're going to be okay."


	19. Chapter 19

**This one's a little shorter than the last, but I figured it's been forever since I updated to the least I could do was give a few back to back.**

**Hope you guys like this next update and please review to let me know what you think!**

It was cathartic, crying. Clint had never really mourned his brother, not in any decently healthy way at least, though that's another story entirely. The only two people before who knew about his brother were Bobbi and Coulson, and he never told the whole story to either of them; they pretty much only knew that he died when they were older. It wasn't quite relief Clint felt, but there was something about telling Natasha that had just felt _right. _And it felt right being here with her, holding her again, having a conversation that didn't end with him wanting to rip his own hair out.

The two of them sat wrapped around each other, Natasha running her hands gently through his hair, until Clint finally slackened his grip and sat upright.

"You okay, Wonderboy?" Natasha had this way about her, this way of exuding complete and utter calm, that Clint found equal parts fascinating, terrifying, and incredible. She, and he knew that it didn't really make sense at all, but she made him feel safe.

"Yeah, Spidey, I'm okay." He said, wiping the last remnants of his minor breakdown off with his hand.

"I fucking hate that name." She gave him a nudge, but he could see the smile on her face.

"I could go with Itsy Bitsy Spider, if you prefer."

"And I could leave, if you prefer." She made to get up, but Clint quickly stopped her.

"Not so fast hot shot, not so soon after I got you back." Natasha relaxed, let Clint pull her against his chest. He kissed her hair and, with a ghost of a smile, she nuzzled against him.

They said nothing, did nothing, thought about nothing. They simply existed, together, for the first time in a long time. The rhythmic sound of the city was an old comfort to Clint, the sounds, the loudness of it, returned his sanity after he'd gotten his hearing back. It was a trick that Natasha had taught him.

Then another sound washed over him, another familiar one that brought him far less comfort: Natasha's phone.

"Shit." Natasha bolted upright, but Clint again stopped her from getting up.

"Nat c'mon, not now." He pleaded. "Don't ruin the moment."

"All moments end." She said, the tenderness in her voice replaced by her clipped professionalism as she stood up. "I'm sorry." She added as she climbed back through the window; Clint followed half a step behind.

"Hey is something wrong?" Natasha asked when she picked up. Clint didn't know who was on the other end of the line but he sure as hell knew it wasn't anyone from SHIELD.

"_No, the opposite in fact. I've got a job for you, sweet advance on it too. Can you leave tonight?" _Natasha knew Clint heard that, he was too good not too. She crossed her free arm over her chest and bit her lip; looking at Clint she could see that this was the moment that defined them.

She could leave, she could walk out that door, take the job and do what she had to do for herself even if it meant losing Clint. A part of her wanted to leave, to wash her hands of a messy relationship that could and would only complicate things. But, a part of her didn't. She could stay, she could put a hold on the job (chance losing the whole bid all together) and tell Clint everything, or close to everything, about Fury and Isaiah and this whole fucking mess she'd gotten herself into.

Clint's heart practically stopped beating when he saw Natasha hesitate, if she left now there was no way she was coming back. And even if she did, he didn't think he could do this again with her, this damned roundabout game they'd tangled themselves up in.

"_Natasha are you still there?" _

The moments ticked by agonizingly slowly; Clint felt his stomach drop when she looked up at him.

"_Natasha?"_

"_Are you okay, Natasha?"_ There was mild annoyance in the man's voice, then panic as time continued to pass.

"Yeah, Ike, I'm fine." Nearly two minutes had passed in silence. "Give me 24 hours and I'll take it."

Relief flooded through Clint and he couldn't help but to smile. He strode over to Natasha and, shoving the phone aside, kissed her. Both of them ignored the rambling of the man on the other end of the line as Natasha pulled him closer, kissed him more deeply, a kiss that was more than a show of affection, but a promise to make things right between them, to fix the things she'd broken, to stay with him as he promised to forgive her, and to accept her as she was: vastly imperfect, but worth it nonetheless.

"_I don't think you understand how time sensitive this is Natasha." _She chuckled against Clint's lips as she heard her lawyer practically having an aneurism over the phone.

"24 hours is not a long time to wait. Tell them if they want me, they'll see me tomorrow. But, I've made my choice. Goodnight, Isaiah." She told him gently, hanging up on him when he was mid-sentence. "I'm going to get an earful for that, you know."

"Worth it?" He asked, brushing her hair back out of her face.

"Worth it." She assured him.

"Now are you going to tell me about all that or are we going to just stand here for the rest of the night?" He prompted, glancing down at the phone still in her hand.

"Shit, yeah." She said it like she'd forgotten the dry-cleaning and he'd just reminded her. "Fuck I've got some explaining to do, don't I?"

"Yeah, Nat, you could say that." She sighed and pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail before stepping over his couch and getting comfortable. Clint followed her lead and sat opposite her, both of them leaning with their backs against the arms of the couch with their legs intertwined.

She took a deep breath and settled in to tell Clint Barton, her partner, friend, and she supposed, lover of the last half decade, why she'd been such an insufferable bitch for the past eight months. Needless to say, it wasn't anything she was proud of, but here she went anyway.

"I'm not a good person Clint." She started.

"Nat-" He interrupted in an attempt to comfort her, as he always did.

"No, just let me talk. I have to say this, okay?" The last thing she needed was to second guess herself. There was no turning back now.

"Okay, you talk. I'll listen." She nodded appreciatively and pressed on.

"I'm not a good person. I never have been, even as a kid I was pretty much the worst. Forget the 'pretty much' I _was_ the worst, but they told me I was the best and I believed them. For 14 years, I believed them, 14 years. I was just a kid, Clint. I didn't really know how to cope with the life I'd been forced into, it was hell. I couldn't let myself feel anything or I'd feel everything. In a place where emotions were considered weakness, it would've destroyed me. So I didn't, feel, I mean. I tuned it all out; my pain, my fear, my hopelessness, I shut it all out. I felt nothing, but I survived.

Survival came at a steep price in the Red Room. Survival cost me everything. Who I was, who I could've been, who I wanted to be, I threw all of it away because I wanted to survive. I became exactly what they wanted me to be: a spy, an assassin, the ultimate human weapon. My survival cost me more than my heart, but my humanity as well.

A part of me liked it. And part of me still does.

The things I've done Clint, they're unforgivable. I've seen SHIELD's file on me, you know so little about my work for them, so little about the person I was. The person I still really am.

I've hurt so many people. Now, some of them deserved it, I like to think most of them did, but I know for a fact that a lot of them, too many of them, didn't. And I don't how to make up for it, I don't know how to fix it, or even if it's possible. I know one thing, I know lots of skills, but I really only truly know one thing: how to do my fucking job.

So that's what I started to do. I've got this friend, a lawyer I helped get out from under the thumb of the Russian mob here a few years back, Isaiah. I called him and asked for his help in rekindling my old network. We worked out a criteria for acceptance, then he began fielding jobs for me. Private contracting like I was doing when I got on SHIELD's radar.

It didn't take Fury long to catch on to my extra-curriculars, as you can imagine, so we worked out a deal. I'd do off the books work for him if he let me continue my own off the books work. Win-win, right? But, Fury wanted you out of this, wanted everybody out of it and so I lied. I couldn't tell you about my side jobs without telling you about my deal with Fury. And I couldn't tell you about my deal with Fury without telling you about my side jobs. Beginning to see where this all went wrong?"

"Why'd you start contracting again?"

"The people I hurt, I can't and won't ever see them again. But, I couldn't wash my hands of the messes I'd caused either. I hired Isaiah to not only field the jobs, but handle the finances as well. I don't see a cent of the money I make off any of that shit. All of it gets put back into my web, and into the series of trusts we set up."

"Trusts?"

"They'll go to what's left of the families of the people I've wronged in the worst ways possible. It's the only way I can help them now."

"Christ almighty, Natasha."

"I've wanted this since I joined SHIELD, I just needed enough clearance and enough pull with Fury to make it happen. I never planned on you and me, I never planned on hurting you. And I'm sorry that I did, I hope you know how sorry I am for all of this shit."

"Trust me, Nat, I know. But this whole thing spiraled out of control when I lost my hearing, with that doctor, there's something else you're not telling me."

"You will never know the whole story of my life, Clint. There are things I simply cannot ever speak of with you and it's because I am not ready to hear them. All I can give you here are the cliffnotes, can you accept that?"

Clint nodded, he'd take anything Natasha was willing to give.

"Drakov was the last hit I ever did for the Red Room."

"But, he's alive."

"Thanks, Sherlock, I hadn't quite figured that out yet." She teased, and he smiled. There needed to be something to break through the seriousness of their discussion. "The doctor wasn't the target, it was his daughter."

"And you…?" Clint couldn't even bring himself to finish the sentence.

"Yes." Natasha admitted softly, breaking away from Clint's gaze to stare intently at her lap. Neither one of them spoke for a long time, they didn't know what to say. Eventually, Natasha decided just to move along with the story.

"So there's this whole revenge story-arc that you kind of got trapped in the middle of. I'm still working out the details of how, exactly, you fit into this whole thing, but I'll get it."

"Who did all that patchwork on you?"

"The Winter Soldier." There was a tinge of bitterness to her words, but Clint didn't recognize the name.

"Who?"

"Forget it. In 48 hours it won't matter anyway." She thought about their parting moment, their final kiss. Another regret she added to the list.

Mercifully, Clint let that one go. They sat in silence, Clint staring at Natasha, Natasha glassy-eyed drifting into the past. It was nearing midnight now.

"Can we go to bed?" Natasha asked abruptly, causing Clint to jolt just a hair.

"Sounds good, Nat." He disentangled his legs from hers and, standing, extended a hand to her. They walked slowly, fingers entwined to Clint's room.

"Hey, Tasha." Clint whispered as she curled against his chest, pulling the blanket over both of them.

"Yeah?" She closed her eyes and focused on Clint, his warmth, his breath, the steady rhythm of his heart.

"Welcome home." _Home_ the word seemed foreign to her. She didn't know if she'd ever thought of any place as home before. Russia was not even in the damn race, Paris was nice, but impermanent, not even her apartment here felt close to home. She pondered the word for a while:

Home: |hom| - _n._

A place where one lives; an environment affording security and happiness; a valued place considered a refuge or place of origin.

_Home. _The word replayed in her mind along with the definition and found there is there was one thing she knew in this new life of hers, it's that Clint was home.


	20. Chapter 20

**I know that these last few chapters have been a lot of talking, and this one is no exception. But, they'll be back in the thick of things soon enough, don't worry. I'm planning a few new missions for our favorite ****duo, including Budapest coming up soon-ish, and I'm thinking the Mockingbird needs to kick some ass too!**

**Let me know what you guys think!**

Natasha always woke up before Clint, her internal clock waking her, without fail, at 6:00 every morning; a remnant of her regimented days back in Russia. Normally she would've stayed in bed with Clint until he woke up to, try and fall back asleep or just let her mind wander aimlessly until she felt him stir beside her.

But she was too restless this morning to stay in bed, there were still so many unanswered questions about what happened with James and Drakov and Clint. It didn't feel over, didn't feel resolved, and there was a gnawing feeling in Natasha's gut that told her this whole thing was going to rear its ugly head again, and soon.

So she got out of bed and went to go start coffee, she needed the boost and she knew Clint would appreciate it. Forget water, Natasha figured that, at this point, the guy was probably just about 70% coffee. Clint's coffee maker was practically a fossil and took a great deal of fiddling with to actually get to work, she had the urge to throw the damned thing against the wall at one point. Eventually though she got it working and turned her attention to the mess on the counter and the floor from last night and was grateful Clint wasn't the kind of guy to get bent out of shape about broken dishware.

Clint cared about people, not things.

_Except, maybe, his bow_, she added as an afterthought, sweeping a few spare arrows off his table and tucking them into his quiver by the front door. There was one of his trick arrows, one of those tiny things that packed a powerful punch, left out with wires and shit spilling out of it. She decided to let that one be. He was always fiddling with his stuff, taking it apart and putting it back together, trying to make it better or something new.

By the time Natasha finished sweeping up the ceramic and glass shards off the floor and shoving all the papers that had upset her in the first place back in their envelope, she heard Clint waking up so she poured out two mugs of coffee and wandered back into the bedroom.

"Mornin' Spidey." Clint greeted with this dopey grin on his face, gratefully accepting the warm mug. "Thanks."

"Anytime Wonderboy." She sat cross-legged across from him as he propped himself up on the headboard.

"So what's on the agenda today for the busy Black Widow?" Clint asked, feeling the hot liquid wake him up.

"I've got to meet with Isaiah, nothing from Fury as far as I know though." She shrugged. "But that could change at any minute these days."

"Yeah he's been off lately, can't quite put my finger on it though. He's just different." Clint knew better than to press Natasha for information, but he was hoping last-night-Natasha was still around to talk to him. They used to use each other as sounding boards all the time, he wanted to get back to that.

"Yeah he's got me working a lot, but I couldn't tell you why. A lot of information gathering and recon. None of the ops though have felt familiar, connected, you know? But, it's Fury so they've got to be, and I just can't see it."

"You're not supposed to." Clint pointed out, bumping Natasha's cup as she went to go take a sip of her coffee. Now, Natasha never held a mug by the handle, she always gripped the smooth side so when Clint bumped against her it should've spilled, would've if she'd been just any person. But, she was far from average and in a second switched her grip on the mug from holding it on the side to holding the rim by her fingertips. Not a drop fell.

"Nice try." She smirked.

"I didn't think that'd actually work." He was impressed that she'd salvaged her drink, and a little grateful that stopped any from splashing onto his bed.

"You hit the bottom of the cup, energy transfers up through the liquid. When my hand was on the side of the cup, energy flow stops when it reaches the top, knocks the liquid out. When my hand's at the top, the energy someplace else to go, coffee stays in." Natasha explained, using her free hand to show the transfer of energy.

"Not bad for a girl who never saw the inside of a school."

"Never said I was uneducated, though. Plus, neither did you, idiot."

"Fair point." He conceded, sitting upright. "Breakfast?"

"I can't." Natasha did her best to sound apologetic.

"Nat."

"I'm meeting Isaiah for brunch and I have to go home first. I want to stay, believe me, I do, but-"

"You've got a job." Clint finished for her.

"Don't hate me, please." She wasn't about to come this far with him, only to leave with him angry again.

"I don't Nat." He assured her, taking her free hand. "You are your work Natasha, I've known that since before I met you. So, no, I don't hate you."

"Maybe not now, but one day you will." She pulled away from him and went to go get the rest of her clothes.

"Hey Nat, wait!" Clint hurried after her, dropping his coffee in the hardwood floor of his room. "Shit." He muttered as the mug shattered, but he let it be as he followed her.

"Natasha, stop." He snatched her skirt away as she went to grab it. She sighed and stood back up straight, pulling her hair out of her ponytail as she went. "What's this all about?"

"I can't ever put you first, Clint." She explained frustratedly.

"What?"

"I am my work Clint, I always have been, always will be. I chose work over you before, I'll do it again and you know it."

"Natasha, I'm not asking you to put me first."

"Fucking hell, Clint, you shouldn't have to ask." She was frustrated and she was not fucking ready for any of this. "You're my partner and my best friend and you are the first person in my life to ever give a damn about me. It should be able to put you first, at least some of the time, but I can't."

"I mean, technically we're not partners." Clint shrugged, he had no idea what to say.

"Not helping." She sighed. Natasha crossed her ankles and half-collapsed onto the ground, sitting cross-legged on Clint's bathroom floor.

"Sorry, Nat, I know." He sat himself down in front of her. "Where's this coming from?"

"This last job isn't sitting right with me is all." She tried to wave him off, but he wasn't buying it.

"Seriously, Nat, what's up?"

"I can't be what you want, Clint." She sat back onto her hands and Natasha couldn't help thinking that coming back to him had been a mistake.

"Do I get any say in this or…?" He knew this kind of shit wasn't easy for Natasha, but he wasn't letting her back out of this so easily.

"Please, like I could stop you from telling me exactly what's on your mind." Clint was just as stubborn as she was and he was more than willing to speak his mind, however she felt about it.

"Because, no offense Natasha, but you don't know what I want."

"Maybe not, but I know what I'm able to give. One day, it won't be enough anymore."

"You don't know that."

"People always want more than what they're given. It's human nature, same reason communism doesn't actually work."

"Are you comparing our relationship to communism?" He couldn't help but to laugh and even Natasha smiled at that.

"Yeah well, stick to what you know, yeah?" She shrugged, feeling more relaxed than she was a second ago.

"Natasha, what do you want?" Clint asked.

"I don't know." She admitted, falling back onto the floor completely, her hair scattered in every direction. "I don't even know."

They sat in silence for while, neither of them really thinking about anything in particular anymore, until Natasha suddenly sat upright again; a single, fluid movement where her body seemed to levitate up. God, Clint had missed her.

"I'm sorry I'm shit at relationships." She brushed her hair out of her face.

"It's not like I'm any better. Divorced." He said, holding up his left hand and wiggling his ring finger. "Remember?" They both laughed.

"Quite the pair we make." She laughed, and Clint took her hand, interlacing their fingers. "What the hell are we going to do?"

"Eh, who knows?" Clint shrugged. "But, we'll figure it out."

"Thanks, Clint." She said, taking her skirt as he handed it to her. Clint stood and pulled Natasha to her feet, using the momentum to pull her her into a kiss.

He wrapped a hand around her waist and in her hair and pulled her closer, Natasha relaxed into him and snaked her arms around his neck.

"Don't you fucking dare." Natasha smiled and kissed him again when Clint squeezed her waist.

"What?" The mock innocence in her voice made her laugh and she pulled away.

"I'm going to be late for work if you keep this up." He leaned in and kissed her again and she let him.

"Sounds good to me." He shrugged and Natasha pulled away laughing.

"Do you still have any of my clothes?"

"Yeah, pretty much the whole top drawer of my dresser is yours." He'd thought about getting rid of her stuff during their separations, but he'd never gotten around to actually doing it, he didn't really have the heart to. He'd always hoped they'd make things right between them.

Natasha went to change and Clint got himself another cup of coffee, briefly forgetting the broken one on the floor in the room over. Between the two of them, in the last 12 hours, they'd destroyed like half of the dishware that Clint owned. Clint figured it was more than worth it to have Natasha back in his life.

"My hair is a fucking mess." She muttered as she walked back out of his room.

"You're not wrong." Clint motioned for her to sit on one of the stools around the island. "Got a comb?"

"In my bag, yeah." Clint set his mug down on the counter and dug through her bag until he found the comb, man that girl carried a lot with her. "Why?"

"Chin up, sit still." He guided her chin upwards gently, and there she loved the feel of his calloused fingers on the thin skin of her neck. She sat still and in silence as Clint combed through her hair and then, with a surprising deftness, braided her hair into a neat plait in seconds.

"Hair tie?" He asked as he got to the end, pulling the elastic tie off Natasha's wrist when she held her hand out to him.

"You can french braid?" She asked when he was finished, turning around to face him.

"I can dutch braid too, and lace braid, and waterfall braid. And I used to practice doing the fishtail one on Bobbi, but yeah, I can do a lot with hair." He said it is if it was something every legendary marksman could do.

"How?"

"Circus." He said with a shrug by way of explanation. "Also, if you ever need your makeup done by a professional, I'm your guy."

"Well, aren't you just full of surprises?" She hopped off the chair and landed lightly on her feet.

"What, and you're not?" He shot back as she tossed the comb back in her bag and tucked her phone into the pocket of her leggings.

"Never said I wasn't."

Clint walked her to the door, not wanting her to leave but also knowing that she couldn't stay.

"I shouldn't be gone long." She told him as they stood kind of awkwardly in his doorway. "I'll call you when I get back and I'll make dinner this time."

"And I'll try not to smash your plates." He smiled. "No promises though."

"Feel free to bill me for that, by the way." She offered, taking his hand.

"Don't sweat it, Nat." He squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head. "Just be careful, yeah?"

"I will be." She assured him. He gave her hand another firm squeeze then let her go, her fingers slipping through his as she turned and left.

"You're late." Isaiah didn't even look up from his paper as Natasha slid into the seat across from him.

"Save it, I had a busy night." She was handed a menu by a forgettable waiter and ordered coffee.

"Busy? That's one word for it." He muttered, folding the paper back up neatly and tossing it onto the table.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Natasha snapped defensively.

"You and Hawkeye?" Natasha sighed and sat back in her chair. "I'm not an idiot, you know."

"It's a relief to know my hired help isn't completely incompetent."

"If you're stopping into SHIELD before you leave you might want to shower at home first." He suggested. The waiter stopped by and Isaiah ordered for both of them but Natasha didn't mind, she didn't like to give much thought to anything she didn't have to these days.

"Why?"

"You smell like him." She sighed and sniffed her shirt, he was right and she was even more surprised to find that she liked smelling like Clint.

"And how, exactly, do you know how Hawkeye smells? That's kind of creepy." She teased, downing about half of her coffee in one go.

"Call it an educated guess. But it's good you two are back together, you make a good team."

"He's not getting involved in this." She knew what Isaiah was implying, they'd had this discussion before, back when this little crusade was all new.

"You need people out there you can trust, Natasha. And he's got the skills you need."

"No, Isaiah. This isn't his fight, it's mine and mine alone. I won't ask him to do this."

"You might not have to." If Clint was half as crazy about Natasha as Isaiah thought he was, he'd be there for her in a heartbeat. She knew it too.

"Yeah well, he's an idiot so my answer's still no. Now, drop it." Isaiah had long since learned to recognize that tone in her voice, that conversation was now well and truly dead.

"How was Switzerland?" He'd noticed that she was favoring one side when she walked up.

"Painful and unsatisfying." She sighed, something about Switzerland was eating at her. It was too easy, too weird. And James showing up? Well, James had always managed to get under her skin, this time was no exception. But the whole things felt, foreboding.

"Just another day in the life then." He could see that there was something about this story she wasn't telling not just him, but anyone. She was keeping something close. "On the bright side, we're still in business here. It's a simple hit, shouldn't be any problems."

"Why big money then for something so simple?" She asked, flipping through the file that Isaiah had handed her.

"Because you're worth it, Natasha." He shrugged, he wasn't about to turn down the guy's offer.

"I'm not a L'Oreal commercial, I'm a spy. Call your guy, find out what he's not telling us." She handed the file back, nobody paid that much money for that little work. Never.

"Why do you have to be difficult?" He sighed, locking the file in the briefcase under the table.

"When it's your health and safety we're talking about, feel free to voice your concerns."

"Being your lawyer isn't exactly without risk." He pointed out, and he was right.

"Or reward." She countered. "You're trying to make up for something too, if I recall."

"Fine, I'll make the call." He relaxed as their food came out. They ate in relative, but companionable silence, talking only occasionally. But, that was the nice thing about Isaiah, he didn't mind the silence. Shortly after they parted ways, Natasha was on the familiar drive back to her apartment.

She still had her bags she took to Europe in her trunk and, since she needed to go talk to Fury, she was going to take Isaiah's advice on showering first. But when Natasha got home, she found her door unlocked and she never, ever, left her front door unlocked.

All her instincts kicked in at once, preparing for a fight. Gun in hand Natasha eased open the door, her senses on high alert.

"Fucking hell, Barbra." Natasha turned to find the blonde agent lounging on her couch, drinking tea and flipping through her copy of _Metamorphosis. _"I could've shot you." She set the gun down on her counter and went to go grab both the bags she'd left in the hall.

"Somehow I trust you not to." She replied, tossing the book back onto the coffee table and sitting upright.

"Let me rephrase then: I should've shot you." Bobbi got up and immediately squished her favorite redhead with a hug.

"What's a little B&amp;E among friends anyways?" She would never have said it, but Bobbi had been worried about Natasha. So yeah, she could've just called, but she'd decided just to go see her instead, make sure everything was okay.

"So to what to I owe the pleasure of your company, Bobbi?" Natasha pulled up a chair at her table and Bobbi sat opposite her.

"I was going to call, but Clint said you were back in town so I figured I would just drop by. So I assume things there are…"

"Better, yeah." She shrugged, they weren't perfect, they might never be, but she'd settle for better.

"Good because I would've had to beat one or both of your asses if you two had carried on much longer. Why the change of heart though?"

"Unexpected visit from an old flame." Every time they spoke, Natasha was reminded of how grateful she was to have Bobbi as a friend. Yes, she trusted Clint but there were some things, like her relationship to her strange savior, she wasn't about to tell him. Plus, she liked having other women around.

"Yikes, yeah, that's always messy." Bobbi recalled more than one instance of awkward exes.

"Could've ended way worse than it did." Natasha shrugged.

"Everything all good with the job, then?"

"I'll let you know when I do." Jobs with loose ends, both knew there was no worse feeling than that. "But what brings you around here?"

"Me wanting to see my friend brought me to Natasha, but seeking a professional favor brought me to the Black Widow." There was no point in hiding why she was here.

"What's up?"

"I'm looking to get in touch with rouge MI-6 agent by the name of Clarence Morrison. Trouble is, he's a slippery bastard and England is probably the only significant European country I haven't spent extended undercover time in. I was hoping you might still have a few contacts over there I could tap."

Natasha thought for a moment, she had a few contacts yes, but one's who could track an MI-6 agents? That would be trickier.

"I might have a guy for you. Let me make a call." She got up and dialed a number, hoping it was still an active number, and retreated to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She knew Bobbi would understand the secrecy behind it.

Bobbi waited patiently, running through the specs of her mission again while she waited. Natasha poked her head out of the door about ten minutes later.

"Can you be in London by tomorrow night?" She asked, holding the phone to her chest.

"I can be in London by tomorrow morning." Bobbi replied, she really needed Morrison. Natasha closed the door again and came back out a few minutes later.

"Alright, we're in business. I can't give you his number, but he'll meet you tomorrow night." She grabbed an old piece of mail from the table and scribbled down an address on the back of the envelope.

"What's the contact's name?"

"Hunter."

"Wow, bet he's the first guy to ever trade on that name." Sarcasm dripped from Bobbi's voice as she took the envelope and turned it over to see it addressed to 'Resident'.

"It's his last name." Natasha laughed. "Lance Hunter."

"Okay, nevermind. I'd go by that too if my first name was fucking Lance." She folded the envelope and tucked it into her bra for safekeeping, Bobbi didn't really trust leaving things in pockets.

"He can be difficult to work with, and you'll probably want to shoot him more than once, but he's damn good at what he does so just roll with it."

"Sound like anyone else we know?" Both women smiled, thinking of times where being with Clint was trying, but amusing.

"Who knows? You might like the guy after all then."


	21. Chapter 21

_Text me when you're back in town. We're getting day drunk and watching Mulan._

Natasha smiled as she checked her phone for a final time before her plane took off. More often than not, hanging out with Bobbi included varying amounts of drinking and, on one occasion, karaoke.

The timing of the text made sense as Bobbi was also gearing up to go on an op too. Every spy, every assassin, every field agent working anywhere in the world has routines, rituals. Things they do that they feel will get them to the next mission. Bobbi, for example, always made plans with somebody; with Natasha, with Clint, with her partner, Bobbi needed something to come home to, someone to come home for.

Natasha got weirdly meticulous about her weapons. She took every single one of them apart and put them back together, made sure everything she took was in perfect working condition. Working with her hands, and the familiarity of the weapons in her hands eased any stray doubts about the job.

Clint left projects half-finished. He'd start working on a set of arrows, an improvement to his tactical, fixing some broken piece of furniture or appliance knowing he wouldn't be able to complete the task before he left. It was the same reason Bobbi made plans, he needed to feel like he had something to do when he got home, he had something he started that needed finishing so he would have to get home.

Her job was an odd one though. It wasn't the target that was unusual, but rather the client that had thrown her for a loop. Natasha was currently jetsetting off to Bogota, Colombia, not to carry out an assassination, but to stop one. She'd done the same thing a few times before, but her employer had never been the Vatican before.

Isaiah had found out why the money was so good a few hours after they had parted ways and, while Natasha thought she might be being lured into a trap or a ruse of some sort, it turns out the employer was just obscenely wealthy. With an estimated annual spending of $170 billion dollars, the Catholic Church could afford to throw her a little extra money for the job after all.

Six and a half hours later, Natasha landed at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota. Now, if you weren't an internationally-known, world-renowned super spy and master assassin, getting through customs and out the door is a breeze. However, collecting a diplomatically protected bag containing several knives, her tactical suit, widow's bites, and pair of glock 26's, now that'll raise a few questions.

She spent close to two hours in customs answering a series of questions largely with "it's classified" or some variation thereof, which didn't make her a whole lot of friends with the local authorities, but it wasn't exactly a lie so they couldn't do anything about it. It was more annoying than anything, but soon she was comfortably settled in a run-down apartment in a dodgy neighborhood.

The one thing Natasha found most frustrating about working in the United States was how renting frustratingly difficult it was to find private accommodations anywhere. Hotels are pretty much the worst when it comes to privacy, they're crawling with staff and guests. Motels are a good option, but still too many people with access to the key to your room. But, apartments, now they were perfect. Nobody ever came and bothered you, except maybe a curious fellow resident, but if you chose wisely enough, you'd find the residents who didn't give a damn. That often left you in the more colorful neighborhoods, but it's not like Natasha couldn't handle herself.

The only downside is you have to rent, which, these days, is almost always handled by a third party, but it's still her money being spent. Pretty much anywhere in the entire world, except the US, you can rent an apartment for a very short amount of time. A few weeks, sometimes even only a week, but not in America, no, if you were moving in, you had to be there to stay, or at least be willing to drop 3-6 months of rent on a place you'll only be in for a few days. It was a minor problem, and she knew that, but that didn't make it any less irritating.

Suffice to say, Natasha's expense account these days showed a lot of red.

"How was the flight?" Natasha had Isaiah on speakerphone and was spreading out the file folder of papers around herself on the floor. Every job had a story, it was the thing she loved most about this job, the interconnectedness of it all, it kept things interesting.

"I briefly thought about breaking a kid's leg when he wouldn't stop kicking my seat, but I managed to restrain myself." She replied somewhat distantly as she began to piece together her newest project.

"I'm very proud." Natasha couldn't help but smirk at the lawyer's dry response. "Did you meet with your contact?"

"Yes, and it was illuminating."

"How so?"

"On the flight here, I asked myself 'who would want to kill a bishop?'. Now, other than a gay, black, jewish, pro-choice-er, I didn't have any idea. I'm a little behind on my Colombian politics. Turns out, none other than, Alvaro Uribe wants his holy ass behind the pearly gates."

"The president?"

"Yeah, apparently Archbishop Rubiano Sáenz is not only not supporting his re-election campaign, but plans to publically oppose it." She flipped through a series of documents her Colombian contact had given her.

"So the president is hiring an independent contractor to take out the mouthpiece opposition." Isaiah finished the thought.

"Exactly. And they've got the perfect fall guy." If Natasha hadn't gotten involved, Uribe would've had a fucking field day with this one.

"Who?"

"Well, Sáenz has been planning to resign the Archbishop-ship, I don't know the correct word for that."

"Archbishopsy?" Isaiah offered.

"I don't think that's right either. Whatever, it doesn't matter. But he plans on resigning so he can be promoted, or whatever they call it, to a Cardinal. He's in good with the Pope, I guess. Since the church knows all of this, names are getting thrown around for his successor and the most popular choice by far, right now, is Rubén Salazar Gómez."

"They'll make the poor guy look like an ambitious profiteer who couldn't wait for Sáenz to quit."

"Exactly. And, since it's the church, everybody will probably buy it."

"How did they get all this information."

"They didn't disclose that but you know I wouldn't be surprised if the church had more spies than SHIELD, it's a big organization they're running."

"So how do you stop an attack when you don't know who the attacker is? Or where they'll be. Or when it is."

"That's why I'm here and not you, it's not hard. Closed door meeting tomorrow of the Colombian Bishops Conference and guess who's the chair member?"

"Sáenz."

"Show the man his prize. Now, if I had to pick a time and place to kill a guy for show, I'd pick a nice friendly meeting with a lot of influential witnesses where I'd know exactly what seat my target would be occupying."

"Sometimes I forget how terrifying your mind can be."

"People don't often hire me for my gentler qualities. Now, I've got to go buy sniper rifle. I'll call you when the job's done."

"Godspeed, Natasha." The line disconnected and Natasha sat in silence for a few long minutes thinking through the rest of her day. It was just past three in the afternoon; she had a meeting with a local arms dealer with a decent rep in about an hour. From there she'd do recon on the building where the meeting would be held tomorrow. Evidently, contrary to popular belief (including her own) church meetings weren't really held in a church, they often took place in executive suites in the city's office centers, and this meeting was no exception.

The buy with the dealer went relatively smoothly, a reputation like Natasha's was as good as a perfect credit score in this market. There was a slight hitch considering she'd busted up an international gun-running crew a few years back, coincidentally that was her first mission with Clint, and there were a few hard feelings in the community as a result of that. But Natasha was a smooth talker and, after all, it's not like it was personal or anything; Natasha was a criminal for hire, not unlike the rest of them.

Recon was easy enough, she was given the suite number inside the building where the meeting would be held. On the downside, the entire back wall was an outward facing window. On the upside, there was only one building across the street that provided any decent vantage points to take a shot from.

She thought of the possibility of a more close encounter attack, but dismissed it pretty soon after. Her contact had been forced to change both the day and the time of the meeting when Natasha postponed leaving and only the bishops themselves and their guarded escorts knew the new details. Now, it was possible that someone there could be dirty, but considering the information she knew, it wasn't likely. Unless the assassin was going to wait around in the lobby all day for the party to get started, they'd have to do their waiting on the rooftop.

It's what Natasha would do.

One guard on each elevator, she noted the next morning. They'd ride the elevator until the meeting was over, ensuring nobody would get off on the 14th floor, the guard was put on high alert today. Dressed in hastily stolen uniform and pushing a cleaning cart ahead of her, she stepped onto the elevator as the door was closing.

"A guard with no gun, interesting choice." She drawled in spanish, the guard immediately tensed. He was taken aback when she spoke to him, as he geared for a fight, Natasha promptly kneed him in the groin and, before the guy even had a chance to register what was happening, grabbed him by the neck, slamming his head into the metal walls of the elevator.

Before his body even hit the floor, Natasha went into high gear. She hit the button for the 14th floor and stripped out of the borrowed uniform, grabbing her tactical from where she stowed it in the cart as she went. By the time the elevator reached the 14th floor, Natasha was fully geared up and ready to rock. She carried a pair of glock 26's in her holsters, and a knife in each boot out of habit, but it was non-lethal force only on the guards so she was hoping she wouldn't have to use them. Natasha felt a thrill as the electric current ran through her forearms as her widow's bites powered up, her self-designed weapon never failed to get the results she wanted.

The last thing she grabbed was a mission specific item, because sometimes special jobs required special tech. She slung a black backpack (a nearly indestructible thing she'd nicked from SHIELD some years ago) over she shoulders, buckling across both her chest and her waist. By the time the elevator door eased open, the guard just outside had leveled his weapon tentatively in her direction, she saw his curiosity turn into hostility as she coolly stepped off and the doors closed behind her.

"Don't speak." She ordered as he opened his mouth, if she could convince the guard to stand down, her job would be so much easier.

But no such luck today.

She saw the resolve to shoot long before he had a chance to pull the trigger, it took less than a flinch to give it away. Grabbing the top of the gun, Natasha forced the slide back, popping the round in the chamber. She flexed her grip on the barrel when he tried to pull back away from her, her fingers deftly moving to release the magazine, catching the heavy cartridge with her left hand as it fell. She released the weapon as he tried again to pull back, stumbling at the sudden lack of tension, and Natasha cracked the butt of the magazine against his temple not quite at full force, but enough to send him to the ground nonetheless.

The whole interaction took maybe thirty seconds.

Natasha favored handguns, including the beretta 92 these guards were packing (a standard of the Colombian military), to any sort of larger hardware. And it's not just because they were smaller and easier to conceal, but they're easier to take apart and that little detail comes in very handy in close quarters combat.

She moved quickly and quietly, stepping lightly on the balls of her feet, down the hall. Around the corner to the left then all the way back was where the meeting was being held; six guards lined the hall, two more stood behind the door on the other side.

Luckily for her, these weren't the most attentive guards. Natasha peeked out from around the corner and saw two guards standing about ten feet from her talking to each other. The remaining four guards stood at the door.

Natasha removed a small vial of a potent neurotoxin and slid it into her widow's bites; she'd recently redesigned them with the help of SHIELD's R&amp;D department to be not only more versatile, but more deadly. With a slight movement of her wrist, she shot a tiny, poison-laden dart at the guard facing her. The dart found home in the man's thigh and he flinched as it bit into his skin, but brushed it off without a second thought, the clear dart falling to the ground when he ran his hand across his leg.

"Everything okay?" The guard whose back was to Natasha asked.

"Yeah, I think I got bit by something." He replied with a shrug. They both resumed their conversation without another thought, well, until, about a minute and half later, the guard hit the floor. Natasha listened closely as the beginnings of panic stirred in the remaining guards.

One guard at the door was instructed to move up, while the guard whose back was still to Natasha was instructed to go check the other hall where Natasha was standing, they all drew their weapons. Natasha listened intently as the heavy booted footfalls drew closer, she knew he wouldn't actually see her until he turned the corner, but she'd have to ask fast when he did.

These guys were military, or ex-military, professionals just like herself. The guard turned the corner with his weapon drawn, but Natasha was ready for him. Grabbing the barrel of the gun she pulled him forward, bringing a hand to his neck and the electrodes of her widow's bite bit into the skin of his neck, sending an electric current that could drop a bear through the average-sized man. She caught him as his unconscious body fell into her and lowered his body quietly to the floor. While the third guard was checking the pulse of the poisoned guard, Natasha shot another dart out, letting it find home in the man's neck. He collapsed before he took two steps towards where Natasha was still taking refuge around the corner.

The remaining three guards were now on full alert and in formation ready to take on their attacker, they stood their ground. Which, coincidentally made Natasha's job easier. She removed a small metal disk from her belt, a tiny but power flashbang grenade developed for more discretionary type work and a personal favorite of Natasha's. Crouching, she primed the bomb just as the guard she was assuming was the leader called for her to show herself. She did, but only enough to send the disk sliding down the hallway, coming to a foot in front of the guard standing point. With the door behind them they had nowhere to run, even if they knew they should be.

The sound of the explosion was loud, even to Natasha's ears 60 feet away but she wasted no time, rounding the corner and sprinting down the hall the second after it went off. The noise would alert the room behind them of her presence, putting the other two guards on edge if they weren't already. None of the three had any time to recover before Natasha was on them, they didn't really stand a chance.

She pressed her ear to the door and heard the two guards arguing about whether or not they should see what's going on. However they remained at their post, as they were ordered not to leave the room under any circumstances.

Natasha surveyed the set of double doors, grateful they opened inward. Using all her force she kicked the left door in sending the guard standing on the other side sprawling on the floor and the other one, less experienced by the look and sound of it, off his guard. She breached the room without hesitation, wrenching the larger automatic weapon away she wrestled him into a chokehold. She felt his strength wane then go out completely and she let his body drop unceremoniously to the floor, the older guard, having collected himself, grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around her chest and pinning hers to her sides.

She threw her head back, hearing the sound of his nose crunching when their heads collided. His grip slackened and Natasha broke free of his grip, sharply elbowing him in the temple and finishing him for the moment with a fast roundhouse kick to the head. He dropped next to his younger comrade and Natasha was confident that none of them were going to be getting up anytime soon.

The whole time this was going on, this conclave of bishops was freaking out, and that was an understatement. Natasha had arranged to have to room rearranged, putting the archbishop in the only spot in the room where there wasn't a decent shot, but that was about to change.

"Take it easy fellas, I'm not here to kill anyone." She said, shrugging off her backpack and setting it on the table. "Well, not any of you at least. Put this on." She ordered, tossing Sáenz a kevlar vest as she pulled it out of the bag.

"Why should we trust you? You come in here, attack out guards…"

"Look, I'm running on kind of a tight schedule here. Now, I'm here to save your life whether you want me to or not so you can either put that vest on yourself or I can put it on for you and that, my friend, will be a far less pleasant experience." She snapped as she took out the pieces of the rifle she bought the day before and put it together.

The curtains in the room were drawn, as she'd requested and Sáenz had grudgingly put the vest on. She tuned out the rest of the excited conversations and remarks buzzing throughout the rest of the council, her job didn't include any of them.

"C'mon, out you go big guy." Natasha said, pushing the archbishop out in front of the curtained windows, right where a sniper on the building opposite would see him.

"Are you insane!" He shouted, but offered little resistance to her demands. "You're going to get me killed."

"I don't have any reason to get you dead, on the other hand, I'm very motivated to keep you alive. If you die, there's no way I'm getting paid for this." She replied dryly as she stood back away from him, weapon in hand. "Now just wait."

They didn't have to wait long, about a minute later a single shot sounded off, shattered the glass of the window, and buried itself into the kevlar vest knocking the old man to the ground with a cry of pain.

"You'll live." She said, forcing him back down onto the floor when he tried to get up. "Stay down." The archbishop followed her orders as she crouched down and made her way over to the window, propping the rifle on the now exposed sill. She looked into the scope and saw her target, another woman on the building just opposite, right where Natasha had predicted. Taking a deep breath, Natasha fired on the exhale.

"Fuck." She muttered, the shot didn't miss, but didn't kill. The woman had turned as Natasha had fired, and the bullet ripped through the back of her right shoulder. She knew she wouldn't get another shot as the black-haired woman fled so she abandoned the rifle and climbed up onto the sill. Pulling out a belay, she attached the clip to her holsters while reaching to secure the mechanism on the window of the floor above her and quickly programming into in the height of her fall, about 140 ft.

Taking yet another deep breath she stepped out the window, feeling her stomach drop as she skyrocket to the pavement below her, much the the shock of several pedestrians below. The stop was a sudden as the start at the mechanism locked off when the was about three feet from the ground and Natasha wasted no time unclipping and set off running. There were only one way off that building without going into in, and the assassin would likely be dumped into the alley out in the back.

Again she was right, rounding the corner she came face to face with her target. She was young, Natasha would guess anywhere from 17-22, with women it was hard to tell, with jet black hair and cold, narrow eyes.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you Black Widow." The girl drawled in Russian, taking Natasha by surprise.

"Wish I could say the same." She drew her weapon tentatively as she replied in her mother tongue, but didn't act fast enough. In her distractedness she didn't notice the car turning down the alleyway until the woman in front of jumped out of the way of it. Not having time to move to the side, Natasha opted to jump onto the hood of the black sedan to minimize the impact, though not by much, it still hurt like hell. She ended up on the roof, but promptly rolled back off onto the ground when shots were fired up through the metal top.

Natasha managed to shoot out one of the back tires as the car made a hasty exit, the black-haired assassin inside, but she was in no condition to pursue the vehicle and had to let it go.

She was shaken, more by her new Russian friend than from being hit by the car, though she'd have a few injuries to tend to when she got back to her temporary apartment.

_At least you kept the guy alive, _she told herself as she limped back to her temporary base, she'd stay in the allies and it wasn't too far from here so it wouldn't be a problem. The thought didn't bring her much comfort.

"I'm going to be home a few days late, I've got something I've got to take care of first." Natasha told Isaiah after booking a flight to Moscow using a fake identity.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing major, I got hit by fucking car." Isaiah shook his head, that woman was going to give him a heart attack.

"That doesn't sound like 'nothing major'." He pointed out.

"Nothing broken, just bruised and battered. I'll be sore for a few days, but I'll live." She said, putting some neosporin on her leg where her skin had split open. "I'll see you soon."

"See you soon, text me when you're home, yeah?"

"Yeah, will do. Take it easy, Isaiah." She hung up before he had the opportunity to respond. Her contact called about an hour later as Natasha was packing to commend her on a job well done and assure her that the payment for her services had been made in full. There was an unceremonious goodbye to him and to the rest of Bogota as she boarded a flight only a few hours later, she had a few questions that needed answering.

_Nat, you've had some pretty stupid ideas in the past, but this one takes the damn cake, _she told herself as she stood nervously outside this seedy bar on the outskirts of the city. She was either going to get answers, or going to get killed here and the odds of either were pretty much 50/50.

_Fuck it, _she said pushing the door open and walked, head held high, right the the back booth of a bar. Of course he was here.

"Well, well, well. Of all the gin joints in all the towns…" The man smiled as he finished his drink, the glass clinking loudly against the wood as he set it back down on the table. His light brown hair was longer than when she'd last seen him, and he'd shaved his beard too, but his blue-green eyes were still the same as she'd remembered, though he was sporting a new scar just below his left eye on his cheek these days. The beginnings of wrinkles began to crease his face, pinching in at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, the lines forming on his forehead were no doubt from his signature scowl. That hadn't changed either.

"You look different, Alexei." She said curtly, sliding into the booth opposite him.

"You don't." And he was right, Natasha had this way about her, it's like time didn't touch her the way it did the rest of the world.

"What are you going to do about me?" She needed to know now what and who she was dealing with. It had been a long time since they'd seen each other, she wasn't the same woman and there was no counting on him being the same man.

"I won't take you in if that's what you're asking." He seemed almost offended that she'd think he would. "What are you going to do about me?" Likewise, Natasha needed to know if he was a target now or not, she took orders from very different masters these days.

"I'm just looking for some information." She placed both her hands, palm down, on the table to show her intent, or lack thereof, to do any harm here.

"You're allies here are running thin." It wasn't a question, if Natasha was here, she needed Red Room intel and she wasn't exactly anyone's best friend in that department.

"And I'm looking to keep this quiet." There was an edge in her voice, he'd heard it before, she was threatening him.

"I swore to keep you secrets once before, I think it still applies. I am still your husband after all."


	22. Chapter 22

"I think you're forgetting the big fat 'ex' that belongs in front of husband." She did her best to sound bored as she waved the bartender over and ordered vodka.

"About that…" He smiled at her, a rare smile.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." She sighed, shaking her head as she knocked back the vodka.

"I'd say sorry, but I'm not. You didn't think I'd really sign those papers did you, Annie?"

"We got married to save face on a job, Alexei, it's not like it was love." She remembered that mess of a job, they were both lucky to have made it back from there.

"Maybe not for you." He wasn't angry about it, he wasn't even bitter about her leaving, it was best for her and he knew it. But he did love her, or at least he had all those years ago. She had mailed him divorce papers some years ago, actually sent them to this very bar, and he'd come close to signing them a few times, but never did.

"We are not doing this." She decided, ordering another drink. "I came here for information, not a history lesson."

"Fair enough. What do you need?" Natasha was relieved he was was feeling cooperative.

"A woman tried to assassinate the archbishop of Bogota yesterday. Young, black-haired, russian." She managed to pull an image off local cameras of her entering the building before the attack and handed it over to Alexei.

"And so it begins." He muttered darkly, his relaxed demeanor abruptly taking on a much more somber edge.

"Who is she?" She asked, taking the photo back.

"Yelena Belova." He said curtly.

"And…?" Natasha prompted, she would need more than a name.

"And, shit Natasha, I'm sorry." He rubbed his forehead, and ordered another drink.

"What?"

"Natasha, she's the Soldier's new girl." He admitted, finishing the new drink. In typical fashion, Natasha's face betrayed nothing. He could've as readily told her about the weather for all her expression said, but Alexei knew better than to think she was without feeling.

"He doesn't remember me anymore, does he?" She asked quietly, setting her glass gently back down on the table.

"Afraid not." He did his best to try and sound apologetic, but she was far better off without James in her life. She was better without any of them, himself included. "These days he only remembers his orders and her." He gestured to the picture.

"How long's he been with her?" She knew she shouldn't ask, but she couldn't help herself. She had to know.

"Six months or so after you left." He told her. After a long silence he spoke up again. "Look, I know you never loved me, and that you and James were-"

"Like I said, I'm not here for a history lesson." Natasha repeated brusquely, pushing her glass away from her and standing up.

"Natasha wait." He reached out to grab her arm, but she moved out of reach too quickly.

"I can't stay." She told him blankly, turning her back to him.

"Graduation's soon." He warned before she could get too far. "Be careful Romanoff."

"You too, Guardian." Natasha didn't want to walk out on him so soon, but being here was going to make her crazy. Also, she had a flight to catch, staying here any longer than strictly necessary was a risk she wasn't willing to take today. She got what she came here for, now it's time to go back to work.

She knew Moscow like the back of her hand, even still, though it had been years since she'd stepped foot in the city. Natasha knew which streets were most heavily monitored and which ones weren't given a second shot and she knew, most importantly, how to stay invisible here. To be fair, Natasha could be invisible anywhere she wanted to be, but there was a certain ease to it in Moscow, there was nowhere else in the world like it.

The weight of this new information didn't hit Natasha until she was 40,000 feet in the air en route back to New York. Making her way back to the airport and through security under the radar took all of her concentration, her brain working solely in survival mode to see her safely back to SHIELD and Isaiah and, she thought with a different sort of urgency, Clint. Russia was the largest country in the world, spanned two continents, home to more than 143 million people, and there was not one inch of her homeland that was safe for her anymore.

But now she was jammed into this plane with ten hours of time to spare, ten hours for her whole encounter with Alexei to replay in her hear about a million times and she was very suddenly not okay.

"You alright honey?" The man seated next to her ask and Natasha noticed for the first time how tightly her hands were gripping the armrests. The man was in his mid-forties, Natasha guessed, with a receding hairline and graying temples. He smiled at her as if he could solve all her problems.

"Call me honey again and I'll rip your fucking tongue out." She muttered darkly as she unbuckled her seatbelt. It was one of those rows of two seats and Natasha was nearest the window, the man grabbed her wrist as she shoved past, trying to get out.

"What the fuck is your problem?" He growled, his grip on her tightening, but not for long.

"My problem?" She asked, twisting out of his grip with easy and sharply twisting his pointer finger, he groaned in pain. "I am not public property, you do not get to touch me without my permission. I do not exist for your entertainment or your pleasure."

"You broke my finger!" He half-shouted when she released his hand, he cradled it against his chest.

"It's only sprained you fuckwit." She snapped. "Now shut up and sit still or the next one I break."

"Is everything okay here?" A smiling, but nervous flight attendant appeared at Natasha's side, her little interaction with her seat partner gaining her the attention of not only the other passengers, but the staff as well.

"She broke my finger!" The man, whose name Natasha hadn't even bothered to get, complained to the immaculately dressed woman.

"I sprained his finger." Natasha explained, rolling her eyes at his exaggeration.

Normally she would've brushed this whole thing off, ignored the guy, but she was tense and twitchy and on edge and decidedly not in the mood to deal with this. While the man was telling his story to the attendant, Natasha simply walked away.

She walked briskly to the very back of the plane which, blessedly, wasn't far from where she was seated and locked herself inside on of the micro-sized bathrooms. She needed to get a grip and fast, she could feel the panic rising in her chest, she could feel herself losing control. Breathing was becoming difficult, and painful as she took short, shallow gasps. It felt like something was squeezing the air out of her chest, her ragged breathing became painful and she felt out of control.

"Get a fucking grip, Natasha." She told herself, gripping the edge of the sink channeling all her strength into her hands.

_Graduation._

A flood of memories assaulted her. James, the doctor, the girls, the blood. She could still smell the blood, taste it in her mouth, feel it on her hands dripping onto the floor.

And now it was happening all over again in a new facility with a new girl with a new with the same people watching on. She wanted to vomit.

Natasha always knew this day would come but she'd never really thought about it, she'd figured she'd already be dead by the time it came. Her position, her title, her status, none of it was ever permanent; she was always temporary, disposable. There would always be another girl waiting to take her place, but more than that, always another girl willing to kill her for it.

"Calm down Romanoff." She told herself between breaths. "You always knew this was going to happen."

There was a knock on the door. How long had she been in here anyways? She didn't know.

"Miss are you okay?" A woman's voice asked her.

"I'm fine." Natasha replied automatically, her voice shaking.

"Miss, I need you to come out here, please." _Fuck, _Natasha cursed as she looked up at herself in the mirror. She looked insane; her face was paler than normal and coated in a thin sheen of sweat, her eyes wide and frantic.

Taking a deep breath to center her thoughts and slow her heart hammering in her chest, with shaking hands she slid the lock back and pushed open the door. The flight attendant that had come over to her earlier along with an older man were waiting outside the door, she guessed (correctly too) that he was an air marshal on the flight.

"Miss, I'd like to talk to you about the incident that happened at your seat a few minutes ago." He said to Natasha as she smoothed her hair back into a ponytail. "Can I see some ID?"

"Yeah sure." She said with a shrug. "It's back in my bag, can I go get it?"

"Yes, of course." He followed her back to her seat in silence and she was relieved that the man seated next to her refrained from speaking to her as they approached. The time they spent walking helped her compose herself more fully and now she was more than ready to handle this mess. Digging through her carry on the ignored her passport and her license, grabbing instead her SHIELD badge and handing it over to the marshal.

"Ah shit." He muttered as he opened up the small, leather object to find SHIELD's crest embossed on the inside along with the redhead's picture.

"What's the matter?" Natasha's unfortunate seat mate asked as the marshal's face fell, but Natasha was the first to respond.

"Sorry, mate, but I've got aces on this one." She took her badge back and tucked in her back pocket.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you, Ma'am." The marshal said curtly, he didn't really know what SHIELD was, but he knew to stay away from it.

"If you want," Natasha suggested. "You can file a complaint with my handler."

"That won't be necessary, I'm sure. After all, you are the victim in this instance. Enjoy the rest of your flight." He knew people who'd gotten involved with reporting FBI, CIA, SHIELD agents before. It was basically career suicide for a marshal to try and take one on, so he let this one be.

"What?" The man exclaimed, half standing but the tight space of the plane prevented him from going much further.

"I'm sorry about the trouble marshal." She said, ignoring the indignation of the man behind her.

"No, trouble at all. I'm glad we could sort this all out." He gave Natasha a curt nod, then headed back to his seat while Natasha pushed past back into hers.

"Who the fuck are you?" He snapped, both of them buckling their seatbelts.

"Someone you really don't want to piss off right now, buddy." She put as much menace in her voice as she could. "So I suggest you spend the rest of this flight in quiet contemplation."

* * *

"ANNE BONNY TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE. ANNE BONNY TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE." The woman blared over the speaker almost immediately after Natasha had stepped off the plane. She cursed in Russian under her breath but managed to push through the crowd in front of her to the nearest phone.

"What?" She snapped into the receiver as she picked up.

"Natasha, I'm glad you remembered." Alexei sounded relieved, but stressed too. Anne Bonny was a pirate circa 1720, a redheaded badass of a woman to whom Alexei always likened Natasha.

"I'd be remiss to forget." She drawled tiredly into the phone.

"Look, I wouldn't have called, but it's important." Alexei sounded uneasy.

"What's up?"

"James called a top brass meeting when he and Yelena got back, it seems you've stepped on their toes one too many times. They're not happy."

"I doubt they've been happy with me for quite some time." She didn't see why their discontent with her actions was a big deal.

"Natasha it's different now and you know it. Yelena's in play, James doesn't know you and they're graduating the girls soon." He snapped, clearly on edge.

"I know." She shot back with equal hostility. "I know the program far better than you, Guardian."

"They haven't come after you in years Natasha but that grace period is rapidly coming to an end and I can't stop them from coming for you. Yelena is nothing more than a rabid dog, violent, vicious, and ambitious too; do not underestimate her. More than anything she hates you, Natasha. She's bought whatever bullshit they're selling, and she will not stop until your head is on a damn pike. I'm sorry I can't help you, Annie. I'm sorry I wasn't as strong as you, none of us were, are. Godspeed." He spoke hurriedly and quietly, with an urgency she'd never heard before.

Before she could respond she heard a faint shout in the background but she couldn't make out the words, then the line went dead.

_Fuck._


End file.
